Effort Levels

Last night's group practice focused on effort levels (EL). After a 10 minute warm up on the lower loop of the park, we sped up to our 'effort level 4'- think running hard, arms pumping and heavy breathing! The speeding continued for a distance of 4 lamp posts and was followed by a recovery period at EL1 (which turned out to be walking for me, in order to be able to breathe properly) for 2 lamp posts before building up to EL4 again. I think this was the hardest workout I've done so far (with the exception of the cross training workout I blogged about earlier), but it felt good to move a bit quicker after weeks of just 'surviving' the heat and humidity. By the time we'd finished our runs and were mid group stretch, after spending all day hoping that the thunderstorms would stop for practice, we were wishing for the rain to start to cool us down!