At 6:35pm, I was sitting in my car in the parking lot at Gilman, wondering if I REALLY wanted to do TNT. I have been sampling the menu of the brand new, glorious Wawa for my lunches at work, and today I had the Chicken Parm Hoagie. Ugh. I like most of the stuff at Wawa, but this was absolutely horrible, soggy, messy, tasteless, and the marinara sauce was very acidic. My stomach was rolling all afternoon. But I remembered that I had felt bad before other track sessions, and I ran anyway, and ended up with a great workout.
This was the case today, as well. There was a bit of confusion. No one 1 wanted to do Ryan's workout; it seemed like the consensus was to do 5x1600m.
On the first one, I fell in behind Dr. J, and she set a pretty good pace, around 6:08. That's pretty good for me, if I had been running by myself, I probably would have done a 6:30. (which is what I was doing a few weeks ago when we did 1600's. On the second 1600, I think she was setting a bit faster pace, and I ended up with a 6:01. This is the fastest I've ran a mile in a long long time. If I had known how close I was, I would have pushed it a little more, and gone under 6. But I should really have stayed in the 6:08 range, because I was not fully recovered in mile number 3, and I struggled to end with a 6:20 with Dr. J quite a few yards in front of me. For number four, I had no energy, and on the backside of the track at 600m I was having difficulty breathing, just couldn't get enough air in. Not sure what that was about. I think my body is just not used to being pushed like that. Rather than keep pushing into the danger zone, I coasted in and stopped at 800. I recovered, and I think I did either 2 more 800s or an 800 and a 400.
The “warmdown” (ha) was an out and back that I was a bit unfamiliar with, and the guys were running way faster than I should have been. So basically, instead of a warmdown, I got in 2 or 3 miles of fast tempo running to finish off the night.
I don't know why I go into details like this on my workouts, I guess just to remember key times where I did something good or bad.
In other news, my long runs have been doing pretty well, progressing up to 21 miles at 8:30ish pace. This weekend, I'm doing the Gunpowder Keg Ultra 50K. It's up at the Bunker Hill section of Gunpowder State Park. I haven't run the exact course, but I scouted the area last year. It is not too technical, but it certainly isn't NCR-flat, either. So I think my goal will be to run a 9 min mile, and see how long I can keep it up. If I end up averaging 9:30ish mile that would about break 5 hours, and I would be really happy if I break 5. I think I'm in as good shape or better than 3 years ago when I did a 4:56 at HAT Run 50K at Susquehanna State Park.
We will see. This is not a goal run, I'm actually using it as a training run for a 50 miler in November.
1 well, I would much rather have done shorter intervals like Ryan's workout, but I am an agreeable chap, so I just did what everyone else was doing.
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