Welcome to the fourth week of interval runs. Sometimes known as track workouts, these are the workouts which are painful. They are speed workouts. They are repetition. They, quite frankly, cause me to feel like losing the toast I ate for breakfast while my legs feel like they’re turning in slow motion.

Today’s workout featured four 1,000-meter repeats. I had a certain time in which to complete a 1,000-meter run followed by a 2 minute, 30 second rest.

It wasn’t pretty. But I survived. The key to surviving these hard interval runs? Just do them no matter how ugly it looks, how horrible it feels, how off the prescribed time your watch may read. Realize it’s supposed to hurt now so that either (a) it won’t quite so bad on race or (b) if it does hurt on race day, you know you can endure it. You already have.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgxFEr0OMI4&hl=en_US&fs=1&]