I increased my interval running for the last time this week have now reached my goal. I achieved the goal I set back in January. I am now doing intervals of:

5 — 6.5 — 8 — 9.5

I started out at:

5 — 6 — 7 — 8

and increase the interval from 1 to 1.1 for two weeks, then 1.2 for another two weeks, etc. until I hit my desired interval increase of 1.5. If you set your mind to something, write it down, make a plan, and work towards it you can achieve it. A goal not written down is just a wish.

Now, keep in mind 4 of those 21 minutes was warmup and cooldown. I wonder what my average minute per mile is if you take those out? I think next week for one of my cardio days I’ll mix it up and see how fast I can do a mile in. It’s been a long time since I timed myself in the mile. Today’s post is going to be short…I’ve got a good post coming tomorrow with my weekly checkin that I’m excited about!

This will be a short blog post, as I am out of town on business in DC. Yesterday I increased my interval running again by .1 to 1.4 inbetween each interval. I am now doing four reps of one minute each on 5 — 6.4 — 7.8 — 9.2 with 10.0 power burn on the final rep after then last 9.2 . I’ll do this for two weeks, then I’ll do my final increase and will be at my goal.

A week ago I went over my interval running schedule. Up until now I have been doing intervals of 1 on the treadmill:

5 — 6 — 7 — 8

My eventual goal is to get to 1.5 intervals on the treadmill:

5 — 6.5 — 8 — 9.5

I was starting to get pretty comfortable with intervals of 1, so today I increased my intervals to 1.1 starting with the same base of 5:

5 — 6.1 — 7.2 — 8.3



The distance was hardly much more than the intervals of 1 (2.17 vs 2.12), but I felt like I was being pushed harder. Gradual increases is how you can get to your goal. Once I get comfortable with 1.1 intervals, I’ll bump it up to 1.2, etc, etc, until I reach my goal of 1.5 intervals.

Interval running is an excellent way to train your heart and burn calories. The plan on Body For life is quite simple. When I do my running routine I do it on the treadmill. It only takes 21 minutes to do around 2 miles. The first 2 minutes are warm up and the last 2 are cool down, so it’s really only 17 minutes of running. The 17 minutes are compromised of 4 interval reps. Start low for a minute, increase for minute two, increase again for minute three, then again for minute four. Then you go back to the low and repeat 3 more times for a total of 4 reps. That makes 16 minutes – for the 17th you go up one a little more to a fast sprint for a minute, then back down for 2 minutes to cool off.

Right now I am doing 5,6,7,8 for each group, then 9 on the 17th running minute for the high burn. Years ago when I first tried this running routine I was not a “runner” and had to start at much lower and work my way up. For example, if you are not a strong runner, start with something low like 4,4.5,5,5.5 (burn at 6). Then once you are comfortable with that, increase it by just .1 each time, for example 4, 4.6, 5.2, 5.8. You can gradually increase the speeds as you become more conditioned. Here is a chart I created using my mad Excel skillz depicting my routine:

Sometimes after the burn on 9 instead of going straight down to 3.5 I’ll go down to 5 and light jog for 30 seconds, then go down to 3.5 for the last minute and a half. I did this yesterday and this is what my final stats were: