Plyo-technic Workout

Do you keep up your speed workouts in the cold of winter? For those of us in the Rush Running crew, speed workouts go on year round.  We have only had a 1-2 workouts cancelled per year...I think Mike Rush is more reliable than the US Postal Service. Nothing stops him, rain = perfect weather, sleet = quick feet, snow = perfect time trial weather! 

I'm exaggerating, of course! Mike is very conscious of the weather conditions and works hard to provide us with challenging, weather appropriate workouts each week.  Mike was out this week recovering from knee surgery so his wife Ali filled in as our coach for the night.  The weather was low 30's and very chilly so we got a little different workout...it was plyo-technic! The main set of the workout was 6 x 800m repeats at 5K pace.  Instead of getting standing rest time between each 800, we did different plyometric type workouts as our active rest.  The plyos were 25 pushups, 50 situps, 25 burpees, 25 air squats, 50 mountain climbers. 

The workout was 3 miles of speed work plus warm-up and cool down.  I decided to add 3 x 400m repeats after I was done with the 800's in order to get in a little extra speed time.  I did the 400m in descending pace and got beneath my mile pace for the final one. I had some help on my last 400 from a friend who paced me and reminded me to breathe easy and push myself. My split was 1:54 for that last 400m repeat and it was a pretty awesome finish to a cold workout.  I did extra pushups and situps between my 400m repeats to really go for the overachiever status for the night. 

I ended up with 6 miles and hopped on my bike trainer when I got home for another 30 minutes.  Not bad for a Monday!