Me & interval training... not friends

We ran separately last night but all week my sister and I were convinced that we had a 50 minute training jog / walk last night, as part of our couch to 5k. I didn't even realise until I was about out of the door until I looked at my Runkeeper and saw it was actually a 26 minute interval plan.

Well that just threw everything up in the air!

I've done two interval runs before - both 10x 60sec run / 90sec walk, one by myself where I pushed myself and struggled, and the other with my sister where it was a much slower, enjoyable pace.

DC had already agreed to come running with me so off we went on our 5 minute warm up walk, before the intervals started and OH MY GOD I struggled. I think it was a combination of DC being there, and the fact that this run was 13x 60sec run / 60sec walk, cutting down the recovery time compared to what I was used to.

At one point I really thought I was going to be sick. I was red hot and each time I started my fast 60 secs I felt as though my feet were getting carried away from under me! My knees even began to buckle a couple of times. I'm definitely not used to running fast on uneven pavements.

I'm definitely glad that DC came with me, it definitely pushed me and he was there to both encourage me and listen to me moaning! I love trying to keep up with him, he is used to running his 5ks on an average time of 4:30min/km so whenever I run with him I'm conscious that I'm holding him back and sometimes give in and tell him to just run off and do his own thing to make sure he gets a workout as well as me!

But he said he was really impressed and mega surprised with my fast running, after I had finished I looked back and saw that I was hitting 4:40min/km on those intervals and I was mega proud of myself. The 26 minutes did go really fast looking back on it but in the midst of it sometimes I really felt as though I couldn't go on.

The funny thing was that we completely overestimated the intervals and ended up running 2min39 more than we needed to! I hadn't heard Runkeeper shout "workout complete" so I was running thinking 'jeez this is a long minute!'. We also ended up in the next village once we had finished so we had to walk an extra 15 minutes to get home! But I'm glad I overestimated rather than under!

I do feel as though the run was successful but I think I've got it into my head that I don't like interval training and we are just not going to be friends. But I want to get out of this rut, I just don't know how!