Trotting Along

I came strolling out of 30th St. Station yesterday all peachy with my boxes of thin mints and caramel delights to find that my Brooks B17 Champion Special saddle had been ripped off. Vanished. Gone. Never coming back. I had to ride home after class standing up. That's harder than one would imagine. So it goes, on to the next thing.

Thursdays have seen weekly visits to the Temple track for 3 weeks now. I’d anticipated something challenging today, and a few days ago I settled on a 5000 m time trial. Maybe it underscores my inexperience, but I figured it would act as some sort of benchmark. The plan was simply to put in my best effort for 12 ½ laps. I ran a 5k in Denver on New Year's Eve. 20:58 at 5280', so I figured I'd be happy if I ran under 20 today.

Warmed up for 2.5 miles, threw in some strides to get the blood flowing. Last night I set my watch NOT to display time, only which lap I was on. No pace, no HR. Nothing too informative, only the bare minimum to keep me from losing count.

I cleared the first 400 m in 79 seconds. OK, I’m a little overzealous. It only goes downhill from here. Next three laps are around 88 seconds. My tummy hurts. 91, 95, uh oh. 6 laps in and I have to stop. I’ll let you fill in the details, let’s just say I was glad that it was 5:30 AM and no one was around. Brought back Webelo memories.

The break lasted about 3 minutes. I happened to stop my watch. I really didn’t know what to do at this point, and I felt like I’d blown my entire workout. I did the first thing I could think of and started running again. Might as well. Next 6 ½ laps are tamer than the first 6: 86, 92, 92, 93, 92, and 135 for the final 600 m.

Well. There is a whole lot I can read from this. Obviously, my perception of effort needs a little fine tuning. Actually, not fine tuning. Coarse tuning. I learned this last week as well. Secondly, today’s results reinforce the rule of specificity. In the past 4 months I’ve run mostly longer, slower runs, with maybe 10% of my miles at a faster “tempo” pace, and barely any speedwork. I’ve only run two 5ks ever, only one of them an actual race (New Year’s Eve race, above), so why would I expect anything different from today?

That’s good though. I didn’t know what to expect. Now I know better for next time. But that likely won’t happen until after CR. Until then I’ll stick to shorter repeats, 400s, 800s. And today wasn’t a complete failure. That first effort saw my fastest recorded mile split (5:46). Surprisingly no pain during or afterwards, but my legs are tired. 10 miles in 1:14:48. Average HR 159, 185 max. Another bike sprint to the train station, can’t seem to escape them this week.

[2 x 30 pushups, 2 x 30 situps, 3 x 10 single leg squats, 3 x 10 “donkey kicks,” 3 x 10 standing piriformis lifts, various stretches]