For those of you loyal folks out there who have been reading my blog for a while now, you know that I ran indoor track last year with my running group. You might have been wondering “will she do it again this year, given her blogging has been really off?” The answer is a RESOUNDING YES! For those of you who are new readers, thank you for reading, and please drop me a comment so I know who you are, and if you’re on Twitter or have a blog, please let me know that too! (Full disclosure: I tend to spend more time on Twitter than blogs lately but I do try to catch up from time to time with everyone and find out what’s been going on, so you may not hear from me for a little while, and then all of a sudden you’ll see lots of comments all in a row.)
Anyway, Forrest Gump Anonymous is my husband’s nickname for my track workouts. This year, the sessions are still being held at the same high school, where 11 laps = one mile. But it’s with different coaches than last winter. This group has a different philosophy than last year. They try to be pretty inclusive and not necessarily stick people in groups based on pace. For example, for tonight, we worked in pairs, where one of us was running and the other was timing and tracking laps. Each of us ran a mile, while the other one yelled out splits and lap times. Then we traded places, and got time to catch our breath. Then we repeated the same thing, another mile. I worked with someone who is now going to work on doing the “run program” rather than the “run-walk program”, so unfortunately for her, she got less time in between than I did.Â
Because the track is so small, the new coaches want to treat these sessions more as interval sessions than as speed sessions. But, I kind of feel like this is the season where I do work on speed. They say that at the outdoor track sessions, that people are going to be doing speed work. But, to be honest, in the cold that we have to endure in the Northeast, I am not going to be doing outdoor track. To me, one of the worst feelings is when sweat dries on you when out in the cold, as you stand around in between laps. At least when you are outside on a normal run, you just kind of keep on going, and going, and going….you don’t stop long enough to get chilled.
So, tonight, during each of those 11 laps you were supposed to start out at a slower pace and gradually get faster. During the first mile, I’m embarrassed to admit, but I couldn’t remember how to start the stop watch, it’s been that long since I did track workouts. So my paces were all over the place, and to be honest, I didn’t want to start out that slow! So, for the second mile, I just started at 44 second laps, and tried to keep it consistent, at a pace where I felt like toward the end I could go faster. So, I know, I’m a bad rule follower, but I’m happy to say my first mile was 7:49 and the second was 7:43. Now here’s where I was a total idiot. I did one lap too many for the first mile that Gail timed me. She was yelling out numbers of laps that I had done, and I thought the number I heard was the number of the lap I was starting. So, I think I could have done the first one faster, but I was holding myself back a bit on “real lap 11″/”my brain thought it was lap 10.”
God, I LOVED running fast again tonight! (Well, fast for me, but not for a lot of other people out there.)  It’s been a while, and I’m so glad I decided to do this again.  Gail thanked me for running with her. She said that last year she always felt self-conscious being the last one out there running, but she was happy to see that this year, people that didn’t even know her were yelling out encouragement as she went around and around. (I wonder if she realizes she was pretty supportive herself?) The people in this track group look to be good for that reason. I hope it continues that way!
Because it’s late and I’d like to get up and get some writing in, in the morning, I’ll leave you now with one of my favorite songs to run to when I’m not worrying about my pace. It’s called Chances by Five For Fighting. I really like the lyrics, which I find to be uplifting. Â
December 16, 2009 at 6:47 am
Those are fast miles for me!! What a great thing to have a track group for the winter 🙂
December 16, 2009 at 9:34 am
It is really good to have this group running together, because otherwise, I don’t know how I would get track workouts in, other than on a treadmill, and I hate the dreadmill. (And yes, that “d” is totally intentional.) You should see if there’s something like it around where you live. It’s not very expensive either – $75 for 13 weeks, so when you figure it out it’s less than $10 per week. Since I never buy coffee out of the house, that’s how I afford it! 🙂
December 16, 2009 at 6:57 am
Great running, and nice that you have an option to get inside at this time of the year. I have tried running once on an indoor track but I didn’t like the camber, it was very steep round the corners.
Excellent FAST mile times.
December 16, 2009 at 9:35 am
Thank you Michael! Yep, this track is not banked, so it can bother you after awhile. I didn’t notice too many problems with it last year but other people did. It is really dry in there, though, so I was glad to have brought my inhaler last night. I do notice a difference if I don’t have it with me to use.
I’m so hoping eventually I can get that 7:49 pace to be my average 5K pace, wouldn’t that be awesome!?
December 17, 2009 at 5:47 pm
7.49 pace would be great and with the times you are running here very achievable in my view. Keep at it.
December 16, 2009 at 10:12 am
That must be some small track if 11 laps equals a mile. I can’t believe everyone can keep count!
December 16, 2009 at 11:33 am
I love hearing about your track workouts, especially since I’ve never done true track work. But I’m inspired, the next time I’m in Utah for work I’m going to the indoor track in the PE building and trying some of these workouts you’re doing! (Sad that I have to drive so far to even find a track that’s open to me, huh?!)
December 16, 2009 at 8:48 pm
i was wondering if you were going to! 🙂 you did so well last year, i was hoping you would go again.
not bad at all for the first time back out! i’m always off on pacing the first few attempts at speed work (tempo runs, intervals, whatever) so i’d chalk this day up to getting used to the feel of things. not that it was bad by any means of course 🙂
i hope you will typically get paired up with someone of a similar speed so that you don’t have too long or too short of recovery periods?
December 16, 2009 at 8:49 pm
i was wondering if you were going to! 🙂 you did so well last year, i was hoping you would go again.
not bad at all for the first time back out! i’m always off on pacing the first few attempts at speed work (tempo runs, intervals, whatever) so i’d chalk this day up to getting used to the feel of things. not that it was bad by any means of course 🙂
i hope you will typically get paired up with someone of a similar speed so that you don’t have too long or too short of recovery periods? glad you are back out at “FGA”!
December 16, 2009 at 8:50 pm
ok. my internet is PMS’ing tonight. can you delete one of those? 🙂
December 16, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I was wondering what was going on! I can easily delete one of those!
December 20, 2009 at 10:28 am
That’s a pretty quick mile! I bet it would be even faster on an outdoor track because you’d be spending less time turning.
I’m there with Anne though – out here in the Great West they don’t make tracks that small. Each lap is about 150 yards?
January 1, 2010 at 7:53 pm
I’m glad to hear you are doing indoor track again this winter. You are going to get even speedier!
January 3, 2010 at 12:05 am
Thanks so much for commenting, Eileen, it’s great to hear from you again. I’m also glad to hear you’ve kept on running (I just checked out your blog again tonight.)