Until tonight, I was feeling kind of down about my last few track practices. I have been going on Wednesday nights because of my work schedule, but now, I should be able to stick more to a Tuesday night schedule, except when I have a Friends of the Library board meeting. I think on Tuesdays it’s easier to find people to run with – there seem to be more of a certain pace group than on Wednesdays when it tends to turn into a lot of pairs. 

Karen and I were both glad we switched to Tuesday.  One of the coaches even made a point of coming up to the two of us and introducing himself as he had never seen us before and wanted to know about our goals. I thought that was really cool of him to do.  And, the people seemed really friendly.  I was able to see my friend Bob again, who I’ve not seen since indoor track.  He’s a really good guy who joked tonight about bringing up the rear and not being a “runner” but I have news for him. He’s more a runner than he will ever know. How many runners are out there who never do speed work or try to improve? You show up every week, you put in the time, and in my book, you’re a runner!

Tonight’s workout was a bunch of 500s, 8 to be exact.  We walked 300s in between, which was more than enough for me to recover.   I know, a 500 is a sorta weird distance, right?  I personally like it because we ended each one on a straightaway and Diane said I used to always take off as I saw and reached the straightaway. It’s like my body just knows it’s almost at the end.

There was one girl there tonight that was clearly a very talented runner, most likely a pretty successful college cross-country runner.  She took off on the first one, way ahead of the rest of us. Luckily for her, there was another guy there who could keep up with her, so for the rest of the night, they had the two of them run together.  The rest of us ran in one large group, which wasn’t too bad once we all figured out where we should start in the beginning so we were able to get into our pace groove quickly from the beginning.   There was a lady there named Lana, who tended to lead and I was quite content to just try to keep pace with her. 

I had a feeling I could really run all out on my last repeat, and it felt really good.  I was running behind Lana, and at around the 250-300 yard mark, I think she could hear me right on her heels, and she moved outward in the inside lane.  That’s really unusual for someone to do, I think, and really nice of her, honestly. I was all prepared to go on the outside, but she moved aside, and I just kind of kept on going.  I actually felt myself speeding up, and it’s kind of hard to put into words how it felt.  I ended up doing the first 400 in 1:41, and finished up in 2:00.  That actually meant my last 100 was faster than the rest!!!

Anyway, this picture below kind of describes how it felt to run tonight on that last 500 – I felt like I could have kept on going – my legs were getting lighter toward the end, rather than heavier.  And I realized, there was not a soul around me at the end, a weird, but beautiful feeling.

Photo by Sideran, on Flickr.com

Photo by Sideran, on Flickr.com