Tonight was my very first attempt at the Fartleck – what a time! All I can say is thank goodness for Run Keeper, otherwise I would have quit! Today was an incredibly hot day in Calgary and I ended up having to wait until after 8:30 p.m. to go for a run – heat makes me tired and I was watching a good episode of Teen Mom (don’t judge me). I had a pretty busy day with my son, so as many of you parents out there know, energy levels weren’t at their highest! But I went and I’m glad I did!

So back to Run Keeper. The app allows you to customize your runs and add coaching in – this came in handy at weak moments when I wanted to throw in the towel. When your intervals change, the coach comes over your own playlist and lets you know. Coach also tells you your stats as you run; cuts into tell you time/pace/mileage – very cool. The image above is a picture of my stats. In total, I completed 6.78 km (4.21 miles); it took 46:31; and my average pace was 6:52 (keep in mind that this is averaged over sprinting and walking.)

Here’s the breakdown of my training session:

2.0km – warm up pace

2.5 km – steady/fast pace

0.25 km – fast

0.25 km – slow

0.25 km – fast

0.25 km – slow

0.25 km – fast

0.25 km – slow

0.25 km – fast

0.50 km – slow

Run Keeper breaks down your run on a minute to minute basis – really cool. It also emails you every single race result – and posts to your online profile. Overall, I thought tonight was pretty good. I felt like I could have started out a bit faster, but wasn’t really sure what lay ahead so wanted to conserve energy. I found the warm-up may have also been a bit longer than most training sessions (at least the ones posted online.) However, the timing fell perfectly into what was described on Running Worlds website (45 minutes) – so I’m thrilled with that.

I am looking forward to next weeks Fartleck training session already!

P.S: I’m having a glass of red to celebrate this achievement.

P.P.S: Don’t worry. I hydrated before. Cheers!