Tuesday Indoor Track, #13 (second to last, sigh)

Run Always by Nwardez, on flickr.com

That’s right, I only have one week left after tonight.  Not sure if I can do outdoor track in the spring, but I did find out it does start the first or second week of May, so I might be able to do it – let’s hope!

Lindsay of Chasing the Kenyans made a comment last week that I kept thinking about – she said that I don’t usually mention the painful parts of track workouts – the feeling like it hurts to breathe, your legs are pumping nonstop, etc.  (Hope my paraphrasing doesn’t change the content too much, Lindsay!) To be honest, I don’t notice that too much when doing these workouts with a group. Even when I did speed work with Lis last summer, knowing that someone else was going through what I was going through, at the same time, made it not bother me as much. And with speed work, I know the end is in sight, and soon.  It makes such a huge difference!

Anyway…we have been moved outside now, and in case you are wondering, um, yeah, it’s still a bit on the cold side to be running speed intervals outside! Some of the track even had some snow on it so we had to kind of fudge each of our time intervals and guestimate how much track we were losing by avoiding the snow and ice.

We only got started at about 6:30 because some of the MVS bigwigs came to talk to us about the coaching situation. Long story short, the long-standing coach of 16 years and our MVS team seem to be parting ways. It sounds like the coach only wants to do one night per week, and also with “experienced” runners, rather than with a group of mixed skills and experience.  He used to be the exclusive coach for the group – this season he’s not been physically on site for practices since before Christmas, which has bothered some of us, honestly. There have been two coaches with us, but he’s supposed to have been the head coach, I think. I’ve had nothing to compare this experience to, but long-standing members have also been wondering what’s up. So I was glad to not be the only clueless person.

So, we ended up running in the dark toward the end of practice. It’s very strange when you can hardly see in front of you to where you end your “220” or “440.”   If I’d have known we’d be starting late, I would have brought the Black Diamond and blinded everyone! 🙂 

Diane was there tonight to run with me – she’s been running track for 11 years or so, and I need to be with someone like her.  At one point I wanted to run faster than Group G’s card (we’d done Group F’s last week) but she  advised that it’s much different to run intervals outside in the cold and dark than it is inside, and she didn’t want to get injured.  So the end of our workout felt better, as our bodies were working that much harder to stay warm.  But the beginning definitely felt easier!  (And we didn’t even bother with the cool-down, it would have been dangerous!)

We’re not sure if we did the rest amounts right, what with the snow and all, it made things a bit difficult. We tried to just keep moving in between whether it was walking or jogging, so we could stay warm.

All of our exercise cards said 200s and 400s, but an outdoor track is 440, no? Hopefully my math is right.

• 2 x 440 at 1:55 with 60 sec rest (7:40 pace, I even yelled out to Diane, “is this really our first interval?” I felt like we were jogging, awesome!)
• 4 x 220 at 54 sec with 60 sec rest (7:12 pace)
• 2 x 440 at 1:50 with 90 sec rest (7:20 pace)
• 4 x 220 at 52 sec with 90 sec rest (7:08 pace)
• 2:30 min rest
• 2 x 440 at 1:45 with 200 meter  jog (7:00 pace)
• 4 x 220 at 48-50 sec with 200 meter jog (6:40 – 6:48 pace)

I did the last 220 by myself at 43! I love running as fast as I can when it’s the last one – it’s the BEST feeling!  (Now all I have to do is string together 104 or 105 of those, and I’ll know what it feels like to be Deena Kastor running a marathon, LOL!)

Anyway, hope you like this picture below – it has nothing to do with running but I like sharing beautiful images that I find. In this kind of economy, we need all the beauty and inspiration we can get, right?

It's Raining Light, Hallelujah! by Paco CT on flickr.com