It was 4 pm when I walked out the door at work today. There was a maintenance guy assembling a bookcase by the door. “Going already?” he exclaimed with surprise. Although I normally get to work before most of the other workers, I still wanted to tell him to shush. Another part of me knew that I’d put in my time and effort.
Although I had planned to run at lunch, I had not. I worked right through – again. By 3 pm, I had exhausted my brain. So I hit the road and beat the heavy traffic.
I went straight to pick up YaYa from daycare. At home, he got started on his homework right away. BoBo was nearly done with his. I left them in charge while I went to the local track for a run.
My 2 mile repeats weren’t due until Wednesday, but I wasn’t sure another opportunity to get to the track would occur. It was the first time I’d been able to do speedwork on the track since well before Chicago.
There was a girls field hockey game going on. I hesitated. It would be rude to obstruct the view of the parents watching the game. Then I considered it further; would I really be obstructing the game? Sure, I would run past many times but I’d be moving so it would only be a second that I’d be in the way. The more I thought about it, the more I was able to convince myself that I’d only be a distraction if they let me be a distraction. They could probably see right over me.
I hadn’t warmed up a full mile before I started the first 2 mile interval. I knew that it wasn’t enough but the sun would be soon be going down. I glanced at Garminia ever lap for a pace check. I was going too fast, or so she said. Garminia also measured a mile before I’d finished a full 4 laps around the track.
The first interval was 15:22 – a second/mile off my target pace. The problem was that I felt like I was going to throw up after finishing. I enjoyed a 5 minute break and then started up again. I felt the fatigue setting in. My legs were heavy and my body was chilling from the cold air on my sweat soaked body. I finished up in 15:46 – 12 seconds/mile slower than the last time.
The sky was beginning to darken, and my body was letting me know that it was cold. It was telling me, for the second time in one day, that it wanted to quit the workout early. I compromised with it by doing a 1 mile repeat (instead of 2 miles). Then, I ran home (less than a mile) and walked the dog around the block to extend my cool down.
Did you know there’s a feature on the Garmin that will hit the “lap” button for you at a specific spot? I haven’t tried it, but its made for track workouts. Then again, I guess that wouldn’t really work for a mile on the track now, would it?
I have a pre-programmed set up for a track workout where I manually trigger the moving laps (warm up/cooldown to and from the track, and each interval). It has the rest intervals programmed as “rest.” Since I didn’t prepare for the run by checking/changing the specifications (ie. # of repeats, amount of rest time, etc) I opted to just go. It works okay.
Glad you got out of the office a little early!
A valiant attempt is way better than no attempt. Good for you for getting to track a little early.