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March 29, 2007
Now I KNOW I Died and Went to Heaven
Seriously - weather does not get better than this. I feel like the past couple days has made up for the majority of the crap we dealt with all winter long. Oh how quickly we forget! At least O can breathe easy. I probably won't want to move to Austin again until next November. :)
Anyway, this afternoon I came home from work and had an awesome 2:15 ride. Amazing weather - just amazing! It was sunny, not too windy, warm, I felt good. What more could you ask for? I'm relatively certain I had a smile on my face the whole way. A little over 40 miles and pleased with the effort. I even tried out my new fluid replacement and am happy to report that while it doesn't taste good per se, it also doesn't taste bad and I'm about 99% sure I'll be able to get full bottles of it down when I race. It kind of tastes salty I guess. No major GI upset though and that's the most important thing. 217 calories in just 20 oz of fluid is pretty awesome too. Two bottles of that, some Shot Bloks and maybe a gel too and I'll be good to go for my half IM. Assuming of course that I can keep that all down, not only on the bike but on that pesky little half marathon afterwards... :)
I also did a track workout this morning! That seems like so long ago I'm thinking it was yesterday - but indeed, this morning around 5:15 am I was sprinting around a track.
Now - as awesome as the weather was this afternoon, it was definitely a little on the chilly side this morning - in the mid 30s, windy and because it was still dark, no sun. That made for a cold workout but I survived just fine.
I warmed up over to the track. I was pretty pumped to be doing some speedwork again on the run!
15 min warmup, 4x100 pickups w/100 jog recovery, 400 easy jog, 8x400 w/a rest of 1/2 the time taken to run the interval, 2 min easy jog, 4x100 on infield FAST w/10 sec rest, 12:40 cooldown
After speaking with my coach I decided I would aim for 90s on the 400 so I would get 45 sec rest. So 90s is what I set out to do and that's exactly what I did on the first one, but none thereafter. Instead I was sort of all over the place - :89, :85, :86, :85, :82, :85, :83, :82. The first one actually felt hard so on the 2nd one I let up the effort a little but ran 4 seconds faster anyway. I hovered in around the :85 mark for a while and thought that would be where I stayed until I popped the :82 but then promptly went back up to an :85. For someone who prides themself on superior pacing, I was all over the place this morning! I chalk my inconsistency up to several things. For one it was extremely windy on the backstretch, so much so that I could actually feel it pushing me on the homestretch! (that NEVER happens) And so I would put all kind of effort into running against the wind and then have a hard time gauging my effort on the opposite straight. This is also my first workout back on the track in about 3-4 months so my pacing meter is rusty. I really haven't done any hard running for quite some time. Finally, it was pitch dark and I get really annoyed trying to push my light on on my watch so I wasn't able to track every 100 meters and base my pacing off that.
Regardless, I was happy with the workout. It felt great to work hard again on the track. I was surprised to be able to run in that :82-:86 range with relatively short rests (:41-:43 seconds) and be just fine with it. I do this workout again in a couple weeks so it will be good to have something a little more defined to base my goal pace off of.
And that's that! Tomorrow is Friday already which is the day I pick up my new bike which makes me very happy! Very good deal indeed!
Posted by beth at March 29, 2007 7:47 PM
Comments
Very impressive workout! Doing such short rest is never easy. I'm sure all of the swimming and biking is paying off now!
Posted by: Alison at March 29, 2007 9:09 PM
Oh good grief, this is an awesome 1st showing back out on the track. Awesome, Beth! I'm super-psyched for you!
Posted by: Meghan at March 29, 2007 10:07 PM