Achilles not ready for speed work :(

I've been doing so good lately in terms of pain-free running and improving pace that I thought I was ready to start training with some added focus to my end goals (my main ones for now are lowering resting heart rate and building endurance). So last week I tried doing interval training. Monday was a short 30 minutes workout keeping intervals to 30 and 60 sec at max effort and then SLR pace without recovery between sets. On Wednesday I did a 5K intervals with variable pace (i.e., 1K tempo, 1K SLR). It was hard work. Perhaps too hard as on Thursday my old friend Achilles pain was back. On top of that, I think I was incubating a throat infection (that is now full blown) so the combination of pain and awfully low energy ended in a very hard 3K on Thursday. I skipped Friday and went to hot yoga instead. Saturday I ran a 6K with hubby (plus alternating stroller pushing) and barely made it back to the house. Today I went for a 5K and was better but only because I slowed down my pace and walked for a minute twice (normally, I don't take walking breaks on runs shorter than 10K).

Conclusion - no speed work yet. I am disappointed but I know I have to do that to keep old injury at bay.

BTW, to avoid my daughter's tantrums when she's had enough of sitting in the stroller while mom and dad are sweating their buts off, I came up with this concoction (notice the DVD strapped to the stroller tray). It WORKED! No more whining, Dora all the way :)

You probably noticed the new addition to my running "team" - our dog Paco. I used to take him running or walking with me in the summer/fall but stopped in the winter. First, the salt on the streets is not good for his skin and fur and I really hated having to wash his paws every time we went out. So Paco spent the winter sleeping all the time. End result - an overweight dog. So now I will make  more effort to take him running with me before the vet officially scolds me at his annual check up.

I don't run like this (form-wise), I am just pretending for the picture as I have no photos of me jogging.

So that was my update. Oh, my friend Anne and her husband were over for dinner last night and that was tons of fun as usually