A Test of Strength (and Speed!) With The North Face
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The North Face for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine. For our sponsored post policy, click here.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m using the Mountain Athletics app from The North Face (as well as checking out some Mountain Athletics from The North Face apparel) for some upcoming longer distance running races, and I’m still at it! And, since so many of you expressed interest in the app with my first post, I thought I’d take you through one of the first workouts.
Session 2: Two Mile Assessment
As with all workouts in the app, this one begins with a warm up:
Run 400m (sprint at interval pace)
10x Air Squats
10x Sit Ups
Run 400m
Stretch of Choice
After that, you get a nice little rest. (And trust me, you’re not too upset about having a break, because the warm up is no joke!)
Then, it’s time to be tested with a two-mile assessment. No special instructions other than to run two miles for time.
Now, for those of us who often train for longer distances and count 5Ks as the shortest races on our calendars, pacing for two miles is actually kind of tricky. I know what my pace and effort should look like for a sprint, and I know how it feels to hold a pace that I need to try to keep for three miles or more, but two miles? It’s short enough to warrant a push, but long enough that, if I go out too hard, I won’t be able to finish strong.
And, of course, while I want to do my best in this assessment, I’m also a big fan of planning for success, and in looking at my calendar on the app, I see that there’s a two mile assessment on the calendar every other week. So, I want to find an effort level I’ll be able to recognize and replicate for future assessments in order to see how much I’m improving. Gotta compare apples to apples, right?
(I’m also a big fan of occasionally sliiiightly overthinking things. In case you can’t tell.)
I opted to aim for what felt like just under a 5K pace, and used the app to time myself — that way, I could go entirely by feel instead of constantly checking my pace on my watch.
Aaaand … it felt good. I came in around 18:45, so just under a 9:30 pace, which is totally respectable for me, and definitely a starting point with which I’m comfortable. And, I’ll be really interested to see how some of the strength training workouts affect my running pace as the weeks go on!
And hey, good news! You’ve still got time to enter to win that $500 gift card from The North Face — check out the widget below, and remember, you can follow along with pretty much all things The North Face (including downloading the free Mountain Athletics app!) using the links at the bottom of this post. Plus, if you happen to be in Boston, Chicago, New York, D.C, San Francisco, or Blue Mountains, Ontario, you should definitely check out The North Face Mountain Athletics events page. They have some super cool training events and a race that, man, I would love to take part in this summer.
Do you have set paces that you know you should be able to hit for various distances? Any distances that you think would really throw you? Clearly, I’m a little set in my ways. —Kristen
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