Thursday – Headed out to do the intervals I skipped on Tuesday due to the gift I’d gotten from my littlest disease vector. There was snow underfoot, and a breeze coming from the south off of the Gulf Stream. The intervals, as expected, sucked. I cannot decide if it was just leftover crud in my lungs, or if there was something more sinister, such as being wickedly out of shape. I’m hoping it was crud.
Anyway, the intervals just straight up sucked. I could maintain for about the first quarter mile, and then I completely faded, back to about jogging pace, and still had to walk to recover after the 800 m. But, I gutted it out, and overcame, and made my 4×800.
Today? Well, it dawned warm and rainy. Warm being relative, and needing a New England-tuned sense of weather to appreciate. Warm being anywhere north of 40 degrees latitude or Fahrenheit. I threw the bag in the car, thinking that it was imperative that I go run if the weather held out.
The weather held out, and despite my working through lunch hoping that I’d be able to live another day as a slacker, I was at a stopping point, with just enough time to squeeze in 5 miles. So, even though the run I needed to make up was 7, I figured that it would be better to take what I could get.
Man, did I take it. The rain had gotten rid of what little snow was sticking to the gravel path along the cove, and the warm weather felt good. I ran without pants, and loved the feeling of wind against my pasty skin. The run did me good – there was a pretty brisk wind coming off of the bay, so running downhill, I was running into the wind, and running uphill I had the wind at my back.
At the end of the day, I was pretty happy – my second 5 mile day, and an average pace of 8:40 (though I think I got cheated out of about a quarter-mile based on having run the course many other times. I’m not complaining, though.
Oh, and I’ve got to throw another thanks to my lvoely wife. One of the many things that she’s reminded me of since I realized that she’s become quite the running guru is to take smaller strides going uphill. Speed may suffer, but effort will stay constant, making it tougher to get pushed into the red. Which ties into one of the RLRF keystones, which is constant effort, and constant splits. Much like ship or airplane design, going faster requires exponentially more power. So, stepping up from 10 minute miles to 8 minute miles is as difficult as stepping from 8 minute miles to 6:30 miles.
That’s pretty much it. I’m going to cross train on Saturday, and do my 10 miler on Sunday.
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How did I miss the UFO’s down in Texas? I live for this sort of stuff…