Ooof

Today’s workout was

• 2 mins sprints with 2 mins rest + 8.

I have a love and hate relationship with time-capped sprints with intervals. After all, as a weightlifter, sprinting is like asking a dump truck to go from 0-60 mph under three seconds. At the same time, I love the fact that I can push myself until I can’t feel my legs before taking a short break only to repeat it a few more times.

So there I was. Ready to run. I listened to “Can’t Feel It All” by Kid Felix on repeat to hype myself up. I did not want to feel my lungs after this workout. But then again, can you ever feel your lungs? The goal was to hit at least 0.25 miles every two minutes consistently for eight sets. If you are into statistics, here is a breakdown of my laps:

*Blue bracket: Warm up run and walk

*Red bracket: 2 mins sprints followed by 2 mins walk

You can see that I was dying on my third and sixth sets, dropping my lap time to a 7:20 pace, but still managed to go above 0.25 mile. In the final set, however, I ran the fastest, with the “fuck me” mentality.

How I felt after the last set.

During the two minutes break, I practiced controlling my breathing as a practical exercise for a real life scenario (i.e. heart rate elevated from adrenaline, fight or flight scenario, and subsequently having to make a life and death decision such as treating a wounded or shooting or not shooting a target/threat).

The shocking results from this breathing exercise were 1) my maximum heart rate was 178 bpm (at the end) and 2) my average heart rate during the sprints was in the low 150 bpm. One might argue that I didn’t push hard enough. To that I say, come and fight me.

So to recap, this was my long-winded way of expressing that I enjoyed today’s workout. If you want to see more performance statistics, you can find it here.