I Love the Track

I'm going to try to begin maintaining this blog more regularly. It's relaxing for me. It forces me to think about things I enjoy. Lately, I've only been thinking about heavy stuff, and it's wearing me down to a nub. I love running, and I love it more with almost every run. So I need to spend some time thinking and talking about it to refresh my mind.

Before a month ago, I had never run 200 meter repeats. That first attempt nearly killed me! It was much harder than I expected. Twenty 200m repeats. How hard could that be? Pretty hard! I ran most of them at 37 or 38, which is quick for me.

Today, I was back at the 200m repeats. I did 24 this time. Wow! It felt great! Okay, it hurt and I was tired and grimacing, but it hurt good! My plan was to do 20. I was going to do 2 sets of 10 with an easy mile in between the two sets. But I was feeling good, so I didn't take a break. And I was feeling good after 20, so I did 24! I kinda liked it. Running fast is fun. I ran mostly 37 and 38 seconds. I got lazy and ran two 40s and a few 39s. But I did have a 33 and a 35 after the 40s to punish myself for being lazy!

My mileage is down this summer to 45-50 miles per week. However, I'm not missing my quality workouts. Almost every week since Boston has included track work and a tempo workout. I've also added some races as faster tempo workouts, getting two tempos in several of those weeks.  I'll probably start adding a few miles at a time through July to get a solid base for a late fall marathon.