Tried out some two-mile repeats for the first time this afternoon!

Back when I was at Salisbury University on the Maryland Eastern Shore, some of my teammates on the cross-country team would talk about workouts they used to do that involved doing two-mile repeats. I would think to myself, "wow, I find it tough enough to work through one-mile repeats".
Now I figured that since I'm trying to up my mileage-per-week (it looks like this week I'll run about 47 miles or so if I get in about 4.5 miles tomorrow like I plan to do), trying these out for stronger endurance purposes may not be too bad. I was going to try and build into them and probably end up running no faster than mid-to-upper 12's and possibly in the 13's for each two mile repeat (I decided to start out with two reps with about six-to-seven minutes rest in between). However, I was pleasantly surprised to have run them a little faster than I expected (and with much more consistency). Most of this workout was on some rather hilly bike paths in the woods behind Hammond High School in and the surrounding neighborhoods in Howard County, Maryland, where my teammates and I from Hammond High School's running teams would do many of our runs. The downhils felt nice and the up hills made me work, and there were not too many straight flat areas, which was fine with me, otherwise it might have gotten a bit monotonous. I would say that the second two-mile repeat had more hills on it than the first one, because that second one was all on the bike paths in the woods, versus the first one that almost took a whole mile to get from the start onto the bike path in the woods.

Here are the splits that I ran:

Rep#1 - 12:05
1/2-mile split - 3:04
1-mile - 6:08 (well-paced :)
1.5 miles - About 9:02

Rep#2 - 12:09
1/2-mile split - 3:12
1-mile - 6:07ish


I was quite pleased with this workout, especially since I did a longer run yesterday of about eleven miles in one hour, twenty minutes, and fifty-one seconds. I am happy with the consistency of pace and the negative splits :)

All right I'm gonna get back to packin' up to move and I also gotta get some things ready for a few friends that I'm having over to watch some March Madness. It's a good thing they're into it, 'cause I don't follow much in the way of televised sports, so I'm glad I can have an opportunity to see what's up in college basketball. Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day and upcomign weekend :)