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July 12, 2005
TL Workout
For some reason I was just exhausted yesterday morning. All that sitting on the couch watching a 3 and 1/2 hr. Bollywood movie (Bollywood movies are one of my favorite guilty pleasures), reading, and not doing a single thing on my to-do list on Sunday must've really tuckered me out. At any rate, my TL workout ended up being postponed to the evening as I slept perilously late.
I had made plans to get ice cream with my friend H. at 9, which meant I had to be out the door by 7. Having a deadline by which I have to start a workout is a very good thing for me because otherwise I procrastinate and things tend to get late.
The workout was 2x12 min. at lactate threshold pace with 2 min. recovery in between, followed by an hour run. It was still quite hot when I started and I was running into what felt like a pretty decent headwind (if ever you're running on the lake path and you think there's no wind, the safer assumption is that the wind is at your back), but even so the workout should have gone better than it did. I felt as if I was running the wrong way on a moving sidewalk: I was expending all this effort, but getting nowhere. Despite the 24 mins. of lactate threshold effort on the way out and the fact that the gnats had reached critical mass by the time I made the turnaround (necessitating my frequently helicoptoring my arms in front of my face while blowing out to avoid getting gnats in my mouth and up my nose), I ended up running back a minute faster at an easy effort the whole way.
I have to remind myself that it's always this way, so I shouldn't get discouraged. I'm not one of those people who makes slow and steady progress and can see improvement from week to week. I struggle for weeks then wake up one morning to find that running is suddenly... easy. Running will just become this completely different thing than it had been for the past weeks and weeks. The change is that dramatic. It's such a breathtaking affirmation of all the effort I've put in that when it happens I wouldn't ever trade it for slow and steady improvement. But I'm an impatient person, so right now I really wish the Running Gods would give me a little something -- an advance, say, since I haven't earned it yet.
Posted by alweiss at July 12, 2005 08:15 AM