The Puking Race

When I was in high school, I was not a fast runner. We didn't have a lot of runners on our track team so most of us ran anywhere from two to four races at every track meet. I mostly ran some combination of the 800m, Mile, and 2 Mile... sometimes as individual races, sometimes as part of a relay. Every now and then, we would be so short on runners, I would be asked to run a 400m. I hated the 400m. It's a race for people much faster than I am. For me, it was basically sprinting as fast as I could for a full lap around the track. I really can't sprint effectively at any distance longer than 200m so I was really sprinting for half a lap and then trying not to die for the last half-lap. It always felt horrible and I always spent several minutes gasping for breath afterward. I called it the Puking Race.

I still don't like running 400 meters at a time. It's a good workout and I know it's helping my racing speed, but I don't have to like it. And racing a 400 is definitely different (i.e. worse) than running 400m intervals. My intervals aren't all-out efforts. They're at a deliberate pace that's somewhat more manageable.

This week's workouts have become a bit of a scheduling problem. I looked at my Wednesday workout and saw that the schedule calls for 400m repeats. Since I already do 400m repeats on Fridays, I wasn't looking forward to doubling up on that workout this week. Then I remembered that Liz and I are registered to race a 5K this weekend and I thought the race was Saturday. So I planned to run 400's today, 6 Miles tomorrow, take Friday off, race Saturday, and do my Long Run Sunday.

Unfortunately, the race is Sunday morning... not Saturday. So now I'll likely still do 400 repeats Friday, rest Saturday and race on Sunday. But that displaces my Long Run. I'm scheduled for 12 Miles Sunday and I would normally go for a 9-miler sometime after the race, but it's still supposed to be a hot one Sunday and a late day run doesn't sound good. It looks like I'll be postponing my Long Run until Monday morning.

It's not ideal, but I'm looking forward to the race on Sunday and when you train for months at a time, the schedule gets moved around a bit every now and then.

Wednesday
Goal For The Day: Speedwork
Distance: 3.50 Miles.
Time: 6 x 400m (1:13, 1:13, 1:15, 1:14, 1:13, 1:14).
Route: Eureka H.S. Track
Conditions: 82 degrees at the start, 86 degrees at the finish. It got very hot very quickly! 7:15AM.

Notes: 1 Mile warm-up. 6 x 400m. 1 Mile cool-down. Goal was 1:15 each. Felt good and it showed in my times. Might be because I'm improving, might be because I usually run this workout at the end of the week. We'll see how Friday goes. The track is getting crowded. Even more boys out today. Some girls were out for a team workout for the first time. Then tennis started showing up. That's a lot of people to have around while I'm running. Awkward.

Daily Miles: 3.50 Miles.
Blog Totals:
  Run - 114.72 Miles.
  Bike - 67.68 Miles.
  Swim - 4,450+ meters.