Intervals

   So I am doing some catch up on my blogging since last week was a pretty busy week.  I ended up doing two overnights during the week which really screws up your work out schedule since you tend to be pretty wiped post call, even if you are able to scrounge a 3-4 hour nap.  Thankfully, with my new membership at the YMCA across the street from the hospital I was able to get in a pretty good workout in between my day shift Thursday (7a-5pm) and my night shift that started at 7 that night. 
   Not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I think its pretty hard to get into a longer run that is on a treadmill.  It just gets boring after about 15 minutes.  Since I had done my long run in gorgeous weather the a few days before, I decided to do some interval training.  I have always found that both the time and distance seem to go by faster during intervals.  It gives you periods where you really focus hard on your speed and then short breaks where your mind can kind of zone out while you recover. 
   I started off by running a mile at a 9 minute pace with an incline of 3.  Since running on a flat treadmill is way easier, almost like running downhill outside, I always try to have some sort of significant incline on it to make it more close to running outside.  Once I finished that first mile, I increased the speed to a 6-6:15 min / mile pace.  I was able to do about 1/3 of a mile at that pace and dropped it to a 10-10:30 min/mile pace for about 60-90 seconds.  In total, even with the few minutes of walking that I did, I was able to run 3.25 miles in just about 28 minutes.  It probably won't place me in the money in any race I enter, but I was still pretty happy with the performance.