Kicking my own A**

Woke up about fifteen minutes ahead of my alarm clock. I hate when that happens - especially when it's set for 5am. So I figured I'd get out of bed and get my day started... problem was, it was still pretty damn dark - too dark for me to run, especially if I was considering Tinicum. I decided it would be a good hamster wheel day. I've been wanting to do a little 'speed work' (shh... don't tell anyone) and I wanted to lift some weights since it's been forever since I've done that.

On the topic of speed: I am not fast. I have never been fast. I will never be fast. I am okay with that. Still, I will admit that I was bothered that my race times did not decrease this year (I'm referring primarily to the Allentown/Lehigh Valley Half and Broad Street). Every year that I have run Broad Street, I have improved my time - this year was the exception. I don't know who the hell I was last year. I don't recall actively trying to be SPRNTC fast, but I kind of was - at least by my own standards. I knew that I likely would not match and certainly not beat my prior times this year. I'm actually pretty surprised at how close I came.

So, all of this has given me some pause and has turned my attention to maybe trying (on purpose) to get faster. This month, Runner's World had an article on working towards this goal with only running three days a week. Perfect for me since I typically only run three days a week anyway. Someone, who shall remain nameless, seems to have accidentally threw out my copy. I'll have to pick up a new one. But anyway, it got me to thinkin' and plannin'. I figured today was as good as any to dip my pinkie toe into the fast lane. I'm even hesitant to blog about this for fear that I won't stick with it or it will seem like I don't know what I'm doing (which I don't).

Anyway.... so I warmed up for a mile and a half on the ole treddy. Since hanging out with Seebo and friends, I've started to learn a little track vocabulary (a very little). I now know that 400 meters is once around a track, which is a quarter mile - I'm embarrassed to admit that I did not know that before. Not knowing what I was doing and not having my Runner's World article to guide me along, I just made some stuff up. After my warm up, I decided I'd do 200 meter stretches at a pace that was very fast for me. I looked up my 'predicted' 5k time, based on my Broad Street performance... and those sillys think I could run a 5k in 24min and 16sec (7:49 pace). Going on that, I decided to do my 200s at 7.7mph (7:47 pace, according to the treddy). I think I did six 200s at that pace with a 200 at 6.5mph rest pace in between. The first two were not too bad... pretty easy recovery. The next few were rougher, in both the speed effort and the recovery. My intention was then to run another mile and a half, two miles as a cool down, but damn was I tired. I made it through about a mile and a quarter cool down - varying between 6.6 and 7.0 pace - depending what was jammin' on the iPod.

All in all, I did about 4.25 - and then I went upstairs and wailed on the free weights. Ha! Cracking myself up here... me..... wailing on free weights... that's funny. But I did lift a bit.