Home and Country Roads

January23rd, 2011.   A good return to the road today.  Strange how it felt unfamiliar after running indoors all week.  It was cold and my side (still quite sore from last week’s tumble) complained a bit out of the gate.  But before long I was back in a comfortable stride for a “short” run of eight miles.  Incredible how this training is molding my perceptions of space and time à as my endurance improves and my distaste for sprints grows, space is getting shorter and time getting longer!   J

Anyway, paced out the eight miles at 8:20 and never felt like I was really pushing things.

Should further note that I even returned to the hamster wheel a third time last week.  Had been scheduled to do my “Forms” routine last week and didn’t tackle that assignment on either of my treadmill sessions.  So Thursday evening I climbed back aboard and maintained an accelerated pace for two ten minute intervals, only omitting the ten minute easy runs before and after the nasty parts, permitting me to compact everything into a single 28-minute session (so I wouldn’t get disrupted by the dang machine’s automatic shut-down).

January27th 2011.   Painful session today, helping me gain appreciation for the rest days.  It’s a four day program this week (which includes a L-O-N-G run Sunday), but the Thursday routine was only forty minutes.  Of course the detested sprints come after completion of that run, but I was striding well and logged 5.2 miles for a 7:45 pace.

Previously I would doubt that I could polish off five miles sub-eight minutes, owing to the lack of confidence in accurately mapping the distance, but I am a firm believer in my Garmin Sports Watch and if it claims 7:45 I’m wiggy jiggy with it.

As easy as it was to push the pace yesterday (the weather has been sunny and fifty degrees, quite ideal), today’s trot was painful.  It required focus and dedication to maintain a quick pace and my legs were heavy and complaining of weariness.  I suspect this owes to yesterday’s brisk run, but it is funny how much I enjoyed the former and detested the latter.

My pace today was 8:20, which is relatively a good thing, but I was dismayed that despite five additional minutes of running I only covered two tenths of a mile more than the prior day.  Perhaps this is an education around the massive difference a few seconds can make per mile.  And the value of rest days…