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November 17, 2005
Changing the Week Around
Normally, my weeks all look more or less the same. Monday is short intervals at the track, Tuesday is a semi-long run, Wednesday is an easy day, Thursday is longer intervals at the track, Friday is off, Saturday is long, and Sunday is very easy. During certain phases there are doubles scattered through there. Races are usually carefully planned now, there is very little just jumping into a race for the heck of it anymore. Most of the time altering the days of the week is doing strides on a Monday after racing on a Sunday. On occasion, Thursday will be strides if there is a big race that weekend, but most of the time the workout is done or shortened.
This week was a bit different. I did my longer intervals yesterday. All week the weather had been indicating some major storms rolling through at some time on Wednesday. In the morning, the weather looked like it would be warm and nice through the morning and into the afternoon with the storms coming in sometime in the late afternoon. I left work early (I had to go back at night) to do the workout. J was supposed to meet me, but he wasn't sure if he would be able to make it. I got there and it was starting to get dark and J wasn't around. I decided not to wait because I didn't want to get stuck in what was supposed to be a dangerous storm. For the first part of the warm-up, it was HOT. I considered losing my shirt and doing the workout in just shorts and a bra, in November. Just before a turn on the warm-up, the sky got dark, the wind picked way up, and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. I got to the track and realized just how much fun the workout was going to be. The track is always windy in the first place, and there was a brick wall of wind coming off of the last turn of every lap. I finished my the warm-up, went over to my car and changed into my flats and left the trainers in the car and got started. The workout was 4 x 800 with a 400 jog. Sometime in the first lap the rain started. So now it was really dark, really windy and raining. I was the only person on the track and miserable. Doing track workouts alone is extremely difficult for me. The thought of aborting did cross my mind, but I was already out and started, so I decided to just go through with it.
I wasn't going to time the 800s, but I'm kind of stubborn like that, so I did start my watch. All four 800s were right around 2:55, which the time was slower than ideal, made me very happy given the circumstances. The wind got stronger on each interval, so the effort increased even though the time didn't decrease. On the warm-down, it rained even harder and got even windier. At some points, the rain was going sideways. In my mind, I think that if the circumstances had been better the 800s would have been somewhere around 2:45. I know that I have trouble doing speedwork alone and in the wind, so I was very proud of those intervals.
I was really busy at work yesterday and even had to go back. Today was another story. Everything that I tried to do didn't work right and I needed a lot of help from my dad, the only one who knows how everything works. The main problem was that he was busy and I couldn't do anything, so the day just dragged on and on and on.
Tonight I went to the track even though I wasn't doing the workout. This week I think that I have done the bulk of my running on the track, but with only one workout. There was a small group and it was COLD. I was very lucky to have an extra long sleeve shirt and an ear band floating around in my car. I was still freezing in all of my clothes. It was only 37 degrees when I was driving over. That might not have been so bad, but it was 76 yesterday afternoon, so given how cold I usually am, today felt really cold. I did 8 striders and felt kind of choppy. I think that it was because it was so dark on the track, but judging by how close I was to the people doing the workout, I must not have been running that slow.
I have a race on Saturday. I would like to run well and sort of have a time goal that I would like to meet, but since I don't really know what the course is like, I don't want to put much pressure on myself for it. I'm actually doing two races on Saturday, but the second one is more of my warm down. I think that I should be able to do what I would like to by the workouts that I have been doing, but if I don't, it is only a race and there are plenty of others out there.
Posted by Blondie at November 17, 2005 08:13 PM