11 May 2009

One part first-speed-workout plus three parts frustration equal 3/4 success

Today, I decided to do a little speed work for my 5 miles. The plan was a half mile warm up, then 3 x 1 mile with half mile jog in between and finish with a half mile cool down. It almost worked too.

I headed to the gym to run on the indoor track. Now, our indoor track is far from standard. Its about 160m a lap or 10 laps for a mile. I was excited and nervous to run fast again. I haven't done a speed workout in a year or so, maybe even longer than that. One of the reasons for my decision to do a speed workout was to blow off some steam that had built up from working on my take home final. I've probably spent around 10 hours on it and only finished one problem. Anyway, the first mile I didn't look at my watch until I was done. I just ran as fast as my legs would let me. In the end, my watch read 6:04! I was really surprised. I thought maybe I'd run 6:30, but 6:04? I was happy with it.

After the first mile, I thought I was exhausted. I figured there was no way I'd run another that fast. I started slow the first lap of mile 2 and built up to speed by the end of lap two. That mile went by in 6:13 with the second half in 3:01. This is when things went wrong. You see, I had almost forgot to have lunch since I was working on that final. Needless to say, I grabbed a little pizza later than I usually eat. So, after the half mile jog was done, my pizza thought about coming back up to visit. That's when I thought it would be better to just finish the last 1.5 miles on the treadmill instead of running another hard mile and tasting pepperoni again.'

In all, it was a good workout. I think next week I'll go to a regular track with my spikes for some 1000m repeats :)

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