My second track workout: On my way to speedy fast...um...maybe

Week 2 of Track Time is in the books, and - perversely - I like it.

I really do!

What I like about it, I don't know, because it is harder than hell.  Take yesterday for example....With predicted highs at just over 90 degrees, and a sure temp in the 80s, I wasn't sure I would even make it through the workout.  I mean, I don't even like doing a slow run in those temps.  However, despite that and the worry that my hamstring and left glute might still be a bit draggy, I forced myself into the car to go.

Getting there, doing the warm ups was sort of a joke, since we were all mighty warm as it was.  However, we got out there and did our 50 yards each of butt kickers, high skips, long skips, accelerations, and striders.  (It's super fun finally getting to learn what all these fancy, elite-sounding terms mean!)  Then it was time to get serious.

On the schedule for yesterday was 3 x 4x400s.  Say what?  I felt like the coach was talking in code.  Luckily, it wasn't a secret one, and it was soon broken for me.  What that meant was that we were going to shoot for three sets of four reps of 400-meter runs.  Between each rep we were allowed to choose how we would recover.  It was recommended we take no more than 200-400 meters at a slow jog or walk, depending on how we felt.  Between the sets, we were encouraged to take 3-5 minutes of recovery, either walking or jogging.

We were split into three groups according to our projected time per 400, based on our time trial the previous week.  I was in the second group and was supposed to hit each 400 between 2:00 and 2:07.

So, here's the breakdown of how it went:

Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
1:51	2:00	1:59
1:55	1:58	1:50
1:59	1:58
1:54	1:57

I obviously had a hard time hitting my parameters.  While I would like to think that that just means that I am super studly, I think it really means that I need to shorten up my recovery between reps.  I was walking out 200 meters between each - as were most others - in deference to the heat and the gasping for air I was doing.  So, next time I might try to slow jog between reps or walk for a shorter time.  We'll see.

Obviously we ran out of time before we could get in the last two reps.  Well, the speedy group managed 12, and maybe some others in my group.  I managed nine with everyone else, and then decided to do one more on my own.  I just didn't like the idea of ending up on nine - not a round enough number for me.

I was pleasantly surprised that my body held out fine.  After warming up and getting the muscles loose, I only ever noticed a couple of mild twinges in the hip area.  This morning, things seem okay too.  I won't make the mistake of running with the morning group again this a.m.  Well, that is less by design than simply the fact that childcare via the GPs is not available.  Plus, I do have the Wine Run this evening.  Yay! More on that tomorrow.

So, my second session of speed work is done, and I have to say I thought last week was a fluke, but no, I really do enjoy it..... I think I like the playfulness of it, the fact that you are running more "all out" like a kid would but in a controlled fashion.  I like going fast.  And, it's nice to see that on the super short sprints I CAN go fast.  I just cannot sustain it.  Maybe in the weeks to come I will learn to articulate better what I like about speed work....or I will learn to hate it.  Either way, it should make for a good story.

In the meantime, Happy Running!

Do you do speed work?  How do you go about it? 
What's your idea of great fun on a balmy hot summer evening?

Haha! I fooled my body - briefly...Track recovery and other random thoughts...

I have read a few posts recently from other blogger friends that list out random things about that person.  I LOVE reading these posts for some reason.  Maybe because I usually come away with a little more insight on the person whose blog I am reading, or because it offers me the opportunity to learn a little bit more about some piece of running gear or nutrition that I didn't know.  One of these blogs even challenged me - the intrepid reader - to come up with my own list of five random things....So, I sat down to write this post, all excited like, and came up with the following:

a big, huge, fat, BLANK

Seriously, I can't think of anything random about me that would be worth posting about.  Maybe it is the early hour; maybe I haven't had enough coffee.  So, I will have to noodle this over in my head and save that post for another day.

In the meantime, I'll fill you in on what you are all no doubt waiting to hear - and that is how am I recovering after my first track session?  Well, after the session Tuesday night, I felt pretty good.  (You can read about it here.)  A mere 12-hours later I got up and ran five miles with my running friends, which of course ends with coffee - YUM.

I really think my body didn't quite know what had hit it yesterday morning, so I decided to jump in and do my PT leg exercises which I haven't done regularly in several months.  That went well, too.  Around noon, however, my body did finally start to process everything. (Apparently, it's a little slow on the uptake.)  It was like everything caught up with it.  Suddenly, my hip flexors and quads, especially, were sore.  It wasn't a bad sore, just a tired sore - like I had enjoyed a good workout.  Which I had.

The yoga class I was planning to take yesterday afternoon suddenly seemed like too much, so I ended up skipping it.  That made me a bit sad, because if I don't go to my class on Wednesday afternoons, I will have a hard time fitting it in at all during the week.  So, while running errands yesterday, I picked up this little gem:

I hope that it's worth the $3 I ended up paying after taking off the Target gift card I had earned weeks earlier buying unearthly amounts of toilet paper and kleenex.  (I love those gift card offerings.  They get me every time!)  My hope is that if I can't make a yoga class all summer, this will at least give me a yoga option.  It offers two programs - one for relaxation and one for flexibility, both of which I can use.  Anyway, it seemed a better choice than the yoga for beginners, the pre-natal yoga, and yoga for mommies DVDs I saw.  We'll see!

In the meantime, I am foam rolling and softball rolling like crazy.

Foam rolling can be a bit of a challenge - what with Dog
thinking I want to play.

Yesterday, our running club hosted a fun run at a local park on the water.  And, nothing gets you more excited about a fun run at a local park on the water than seeing the front page of the local newspaper talking about toxic algae blooms, complete with photo taken at said park.  Ewwww.  Good thing we're not the local swimming club.  (I wonder if there even is one?)

If I were a good blogger, I would have gotten a picture of the toxic algae, instead all you get is runners.

Hubby joined the pack for the run - his second since his 100-miler and that seemed to go well.  I and the kids exercised our right to play at the park with friends.  Afterwards, we enjoyed veggie subs and ice cream sundaes.  Some of us enjoyed the ice cream more than others.

Nothing gets kids hooked on running like sugaring them up with a bunch of treats.  Positive association and all that. Anyway, a fun night by all.

Today, the plan is to do my 6K row - nice and easy.  I may also plug in my yoga DVD if there is time.  Finally, I am hoping to bike the kids to summer school today.  We'll see if they go for that.  Then it's errands, clean up time, and karate.  Isn't summer supposed to be relaxing? What's all this running around stuff?

Happy Running!

First Track Workout EVER

It's Track Time....In my head I am saying that like the opener of "You Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer......(You know, It's Hammer Time). Don't ask me why. I am a child of the 80s, I guess. (Or would that be 90s? Anyhoo....)

So, yesterday evening was my ~ drumroll, please ~... FIRST....TRACK....WORKOUT.....EVER.  Period.  And I was incredibly nervous about it for some reason.  I wish I knew what intimidated me about it so much.  Perhaps it was the flashbacks to high school gym class I suffered whenever I thought of it - the idea of being last and having everybody wait for me.  Perhaps it was wanting to avoid having the world see just how incredibly slow I am.  Or, maybe, just maybe, it was that I didn't want to know myself just how far my laziness and lack of motivation go.

You see, the crux of the problem with me is that I am slow, but I am unmotivated to punish myself to get faster.  I am Lazy, with a capital L.  Back in college I used to joke with my roommate that the only way you would see me run is if I were being chased by someone.  I am just not motivated to push myself.  Well, somehow I got over the "never run" part, but I still lack that "killer-instinct, go-for-the-jugular" gene that most people have.  I have conditioned myself to such a degree to accept that I don't care if I get faster that pushing myself to go faster just seems like a foreign concept to me.

And, that is why I really need a Track Time class.  I won't go faster on my own.  However, if I have someone telling me what to do, maybe - just maybe - I can break through the mental barricades I have in place.

So, showing up to yesterday's Track Time was a HUGE thing for me, and also nerve-wracking.  Luckily for me, they had planned a nerve-calming activity to get us started - namely filling out more paperwork than I have seen since giving birth.  We had the typical "don't-sue-us-if-you-die" forms, but also some questionnaires that - if the coaches actually read the answers - will help them get to know us better: a lot of questions on goals, PRs, injury history, how running and meeting goals (or not) makes us feel, etc.  I am not sure about that last one.  Why do they want to know how we feel if we don't meet our goals?  Are they afraid we will go postal if we don't do a sub-5 mile by the end of the summer?

There were two coaches for the class and they were great.  After filling out our ream of paperwork, they started the actual teaching part of the class by taking us through a few drills.  Fifty yards each of butt kicks, high knees, skipping high, skipping long, and then some accelerations.  Those last ones I kind of liked. I have to say by the time we were done with our "warm-ups" I was already out of breath and ready to sit down for a while.  Not a great confidence builder right before your time trial.  Instead of sitting down, though, it was on to a warm-up jog.

So, the Time Trial. I have to say I was really dreading this for the aforementioned reasons.  I just didn't want to know how fast I could go while at the same time I really wanted to know how fast I could go (I was very conflicted apparently).  We were given the choice of doing a one-mile or a two-mile time trial.  The idea was that if you were shooting more for 5Ks and 10Ks, then the one-mile made more sense; half marathons or marathons, then the two-mile.  Mentally, I was all set for the one-miler, because I didn't actually know there would be a two-mile option, but given the reasoning, I ended up going with the two-miler.

Let me start by saying that the Time Trial was really hard! I had no idea if I should try to start out slower and build up speed or just sprint from the get-go. I guess I figured since this was a time trial, I should just try to go as fast as I could.  So, when it was ready, set, go time, I went.  I sprinted around the track for my first quarter mile in 1:37.  The first clue that this was too fast for me was that I was one of the first people around the track.... I am NOT that fast.  Halfway around the track for my second lap, my legs were already starting to feel heavy.  One nice gal let me know as she passed me that I was supposed to move in to Lane 1 to get the most accurate measurement, not stick stubbornly in lane 4 like I was.  Who knew?  (Seriously, folks, I have never done this before.)  By the time I was done with my second lap, I was already trying to convince myself why I shouldn't stop at the one-mile point and call it good.  I really struggled with that decision, so that even after I passed one mile I was still asking myself why I didn't stop.  Anyway, long story slightly less long, I did my first mile in eight minutes and my second mile in nine.  So, 17:00 total for the two.  Not bad, I guess.  A friend of mine predicted I would finish my first mile in 8:02, so she was pretty right on for that.  I guessed 9:02, so I sort of win, too (if you count the second mile as the first).

After the time trial, we wrapped up our track workout with some fartleks.  Basically, we jogged in formation in a long line, and the person at the back had to sprint to the front of the line and set the pace.  We kept this up for one mile, and I got to sprint to the front twice.  We did about eight minutes worth of stretching at the end and then we were done.

I was a bad blogger, so I failed to get some pictures - hopefully next week.  And, there will be a next week. In the end, I will admit that I kind of enjoyed the track workout.  I mean, I hated the time trial - too much pressure for me somehow.  But I really had fun doing the accelerations and the fartleks.  And, the squishy feel of the track was nice.  I think running as fast as I can for short distances appeals to me.  I like the way it feels to go fast; I just can't maintain it for longer than a sixteenth of a mile apparently.  I guess I have some hope that doing the track workouts will help me get marginally faster, and maybe I will be able to get closer to that goal of doing a four-hour marathon.  Hope springs eternal!

After the workout, getting to sleep last night was not the easiest. My body was all energized after running and then adding some food to the mix didn't help.  I slept horribly.  Getting up for my Wednesday morning group run was challenging but a lot of fun.  We've moved to summer hours, which means meeting at 7:30 a.m.  That was a little rough, and I wonder what my body thinks about doing speedwork and then running again twelve hours later.  I am hoping that it will just sort of consider this all as one run and not hold it too much against me.  We'll see.  My plan was to go out and do an easy three miles, but I ended up doing 5.3 miles at a 9:36 average pace.  This is the danger with the group run.  So far, so good, but I will have to watch closely to make sure I don't hurt something by doing the infamous "too much, too soon."  Luckily, I don't have to run again until Friday evening, so there should be plenty of time for rest.

In any case, I hate to give up the group run.  Today was just another lovely reminder of why I do it.  Run done, and then coffee and chat for another hour and a half.  A great way to start the day - made sweeter by the fact that with the earlier start time, the coffee hour is actually at a more acceptable coffee drinking time.  I am already looking forward to the weeks to come.

Happy Running!

In Non-Running, Running Related News...

What type of learner are you?  Some people learn best by reading about something, some are learning-by-doing types, I - on the other hand - am clearly a learning-by-being-spoonfed-information-from-an-authorized-person type.  And that is why I have decided that to improve my speed, I needed to sign up for a track session course this summer.  This is guaranteed - I am sure - to make me a better, badder, faster runner...........

............Yeah, right.  Well, it can't hurt, can it?  That is, unless it can.  It seems every time I try to incorporate speed work on my own, I get injured.  I guess with this I am hoping that running around in circles on a track with a coaching type watching me, I will be spared that.  We'll see.

In other non-running, running-related news, I have also signed up for a running evaluation and mini-ChiRunning lesson from an awesome personal trainer and coaching type in the area.  I am very excited to see what she has to say about my running form.  I took a half-day ChiRunning workshop from her about a year ago, so having a bit of feedback on where I am at now will be nice.  (I.e., did any of the information stick at all?)

Finally, my last bit of news,....I have joined a third running club.  Does that make me a traitor?

Apparently, I collect running clubs like other people collect race shirts or running shoes.  It's not that my heart is not fully engaged with my home running club!  However, if I can get a bit of news and perhaps a discount or two from the other clubs, what can it hurt?  Also, the third club gave me a free running hat for joining.  So, perhaps I just really like collecting running hats?