I just renewed my Runner's World subscription a couple of days ago. 12 issues for 12 dollars. That's quite a bargain, especially if you compare it to the price on newsstands. Anyways, what I meant to say... I read running magazines and books for around a year now. There is tons of helpful information in there: training suggestions, gear reviews, inspirational stories and and and. But as it is in life sometimes, only because you know, doesn't necessarily mean that the knowledge steers your action.
In this context, I am referring to TRACK WORKOUTS.
The goals in my running are still very basic... I want to increase my endurance and I want to get faster. It doesn't matter what you read or hear about running, the opinions are pretty much the same. If you want to increase your endurance, you have to increase your long runs and to get faster you have to do track workouts. So really when you open up a running magazine they just give suggestions on how to make long runs or track workouts more fun and interesting, but really never question the need for both. I think I am fairly okay when it comes to the long runs, but I never made it on a track. Terry and I have been talking about it and he actually started doing them for his marathon preparation, but I got stuck on the "talking about it" part.
Well, now that I am on the coach's plan, things are a little different. I had my first track workout scheduled for last night.
So yesterday I was monitoring the weather forecast. It looked horrible out there during the day... A lot of rain and windy. Fortunately by the time I got out to Furman the rain had stopped and the wind died down a couple of minutes here and there.
The workout started with a two mile warm-up. Instead of doing the warm-up on the track, I decided to run around the Furman campus, because there were no lights on the track and I didn't wanted to spend more time there than I had to. Of course I had my head lamp on, but running around in circles for two miles just seemed to be a little boring. I ended up completing the warm-up with one lap on the track, just to get my eyes used to the dark and to have a look around in general. The plan said to run 4x400 fast effort with a recovery lap in between which comes to a total of two miles for the track workout.
I never thought I would say that, but I actually enjoyed the time on the track. I am not saying that it was easy and I am not saying that in the final 400 I wasn't ready to call it a day, but it felt good to push my limits some... and for a little bit it didn't feel so good at all... that was when my stomach let me know that it won't let me do much more of these. I ended up pretty consistent with around a 7:09 minute/ mile pace for those fast efforts.
After the track I did another small loop around the campus for my one mile cool down.
And there is was... The first track workout in the books! ;-)
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