My Apologies

I owe all three of my readers an apology. I mean, I can't just stop by this blog and tell you what a great workout I had this morning without some sort of explanation about why I haven't posted in 3 weeks. Don't you at least deserve that? My apologies for leaving you hanging.

Work has been extremely busy since about March 15, and it really has gotten intense since the week of the Country Music Marathon. I've had to decide whether I'll do without sleep, workouts, or blogging. Well, blogging got the ax. Actually, lots of things slipped, not just blogging. Things seem to be more reasonable now, so the hiatus was temporary. I'm back. Besides, all you missed was marathon recovery. You didn't really want to hear about short, slow workouts did you?

Right now, I'm beginning Jack Daniels' Gold Elite plan. It's supposed to get one ready for a variety of race distances, except the marathon. I don't have a marathon on my schedule any time soon, so I'll be doing the occasional 5k, 10k, 5 mile, 8k, or whatever distance is in the area on a given weekend. This plan adds what Daniels calls "repetition" training. I haven't done any of that, so I hope this will freshen up my workouts and stimulate systems in my body that haven't been used yet and help me past this plateau I'm on.

Today was a repetition day. 10 x 400m at "R" pace (faster than 5k, maybe 1 mile or 3k pace) with long rest between bouts. The goal is to recover such that the next one feels like the first one. You may take 3 to 5 minutes between reps. If it takes longer than 5 minutes, you're running too fast.

Matt came over and we ran to the Athens high track. This was perhaps the slowest warmup ever because I dreaded running these reps. I was delaying in every way possible, and Matt called me out on it, too! It turns out that I really liked this workout. The last 3 or 4 were right on the edge of nausea in the last 100m, which is where I like to be for a hard workout. I sure don't want to cross the line and lose the contents of my stomach, though. Anyway, here are the numbers.

1. 82
2. 80
3. 79
4. 78
5. 77
6. 80
7. 79
8. 78
9. 77
10. 75

I've really felt great all day. Man, that workout felt good. (Well, except for the actual running fast part, that pretty much hurt.)