Today I was challenged by my wife to incorporate the leg lifts into my run that she is doing with her zombie run ap. I thought it a good idea despite the ridiculous way it looks (marching band on speed.) Her challenge had her doing five sets of ten reps (20 steps). I decided I didn’t want to do it until I warmed up, so after a half mile or so I found my self in the park with no one around, time for leg lifts. I tried to keep my pace te same as my regular running, but I found myself going faster than I did normally. Each step for the cycle of 10 is basically an exaggerated running step lifting your leg as high as you can. I did the first set pretty easily and it was over before I knew it. I thought to myself that wasn’t bad. Ater several blocks I decided to do another set, this time I went longer. Even with the increase in distance, it still felt pretty easy. So after a bit of a regular run rest I decided to do my third set, but this time I went a full block. For the fourth and fifth I did the same. My legs weren’t burning at all, but I noticed that at the end of the fifth set I wasn’t lifting very high at all. Finally the fatigue won the battle. The rest of my run (another four miles) my legs felt like lead, I could barely move! I am looking forward to trying these again.

Throughout the run I was flirting with sub 10 min miles. Every time I looked I was a tad slow, but just a tad. With a couple miles left I was still slow and I had the hills to deal with, combined with my dead legs I figured that was that. Still I picked up the pace and went from 22 secs behind pace to 16 secs behind goal pace as I went into my final mile. I realized that my flirtation was actually doable and with a quarter mile to go I thought I can make up those seconds. My fast pace became a sprint and I got to the gate just under 9:59 pace for the entire run! Boom! My speed has really been suffering the last year, it is something I would really like to improve. I see some track workouts in my near future…