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October 24, 2005
Racing the Rain
The weather today steadily got worse. This morning when I went out to grocery shop, it was sunny. I don't really recall it being windy. A bit on the cool side, but it is late October, so that is normal. By the time I was getting ready to leave for the track, the weather didn't look very promising. It was getting colder, very windy, and the green on the radar was inching its way in. This area isn't really supposed to be in the path of Wilma, it is two low pressure areas converging over the Philadelphia region that is supposed to dump over two inches of rain by tomorrow night and have gusty winds-according to the meteorologist.
I got to the track and we all started to complain that we were cold when we were just standing around. Then we started to wonder if we would get done before the skies opened up on us. The workout was to do 400s, but instead of having a set number, we did them for time. The goal was to do 30 minutes of 400s with a 200 float and get them in before the rain started. There must have been a really strange wind going on because the wind wasn't in your face on the backstretch, it was actually at your back. In all the years that I've run on this track, there probably have only been about two or three times that this has happened. Instead, there was a fierce wind on the homestretch of the track, as this track always has at least one stretch with a strong wind.
There weren't that many people at the track tonight. When it starts to get dark and the season starts to end, people stop coming for a while. I ended up running by myself in the wind for most of the workout. The first five quarters were very comfortable in 87, but then the wind started to pick up. I guess that I also got a bit out of it mentally because there was one guy way in front of me and a big group behind me. The group cut some corners on the recoveries and caught up to me. J said they kind of felt bad that I was out there all by myself. I did the last few with them and brought the splits back down to 87s. I really think that if I had been doing the intervals with someone else and took turns leading, I would have been comfortable doing 87 or faster on all of them. It started to rain on us after about 25 minutes, so we didn't beat the rain.
It was raining pretty hard during the warm down and I don't expect it to stop anytime soon. My legs feel very tight, I need to schedule a massage soon. Tonight I definitely need to stretch and roll around on the foam roller to work out some of the kinks that I'm feeling.
Posted by Blondie at October 24, 2005 07:58 PM