saturday morning tempo: 2 x 2 miles

April 21st

After a week with a hard workout plus a race I finally felt ready for two hard workouts in one week! So I bravely emailed my coach and asked for the second workout. I knew there was no way I’d be able to talk anyone into running this with me so it was going to be a solo one… NBD right? Nope… actually very, very, very BD.

This workout was in trouble before it began for the following reasons (which I blissfully chose ignored) but before that… It was sunny and a little warm. I was finally able to wear shorts (my favorite lulu ones that they don’t make anymore) and my flying birds Oiselle T (amazingly soft!).

Shorts and a T! And all smiles!

… and back to my reasons issues…

1) I thought the workout would be easy. Never a good thing for me. Maybe because I’m mental but whenever I think a workout is easy it feels a million times harder (I know I’m a head-case).

My goal pace was 6:44 and somehow I got it in my head that it would feel easy… I know… blame it on my runners high from my Wednesday speed session… ugh. It was anything but easy.

2) I slept for 11 hours the night before. How could this possibly be bad? Well the sleep was induced by a bad case of allergies. I could barely open my eyes Thursday and Friday and clearly my body gave up on me come Friday night (like 9pm on a Friday night). I awoke from my hibernation in a foggy haze.

3) I can’t do running math. I’d like to blame my lack of running math skills on my sleep haze, but I just can’t do running math (regular math I’m actually good at… slightly dyslexic with numbers, but overall good with real world math).

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what my splits were supposed to be… 1:43? Yes I:43… err… no not all. 1:41s. So when I started my reps I was hitting 1:41s and I thought I was running too fast so I slowed down… oops… so I sort of missed pace…

4) It was a dirt track. … however, according to my Garmin… I was on pace with my 1:43s. Blame it on the dirt track at an old middle school… I think the thing is 400m but if it’s like the one at GL it’s a little long… it’s that the whole yard conversion? Remember… not good at running math.

Dirt tracks also mean all loss of track etiquette. Including (but not limited to) dog walkers in lanes one two and three, walkers in lane one two and three, joggers with ear phones in lanes one two and three. But I will say it’s at least entertaining… and I knew what I was getting myself into.

details… details…

The reps didn’t feel great but they didn’t feel bad. My legs were a little tired but not bad. I liked running laps on the track, 400ms seems short after running mile reps around the lake.

Here are all the boring details…

run pretty run fast

rep 1

Laps8

4 min jog…

rep 2

Laps8