Training for 2/21/13

This morning, I went to the track for my longest interval workout of this training cycle, eight 800-meter repeats with 400 meters of recovery between each. With warm up and cool down miles, I was planning on putting in nine miles at the track today.

Today was sunny, but, once again, very cold and breezy. The feels like temp was in the teens with the wind chill. Half of me wanted to get out there and nail this speed workout. The other half wanted to forget about this whole “running outdoors” business and stay burrowed under the covers at home.

Somehow, the runner half of me won out again. It’s a good thing both this training cycle and winter are coming to an end, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. It’s getting harder and harder every day to convince myself to just get out there when it’s as bitterly cold as it is. I’m OK once I get going, but I am so sick of layering up and still feeling frozen for the first bit of every run.

I got dressed, ate some breakfast and drove to the track. One good thing about this cold weather — it keeps away the walkers. I had the place all to myself the whole time I was there today.

I fired up the iPod and started on my warm up mile. The wind was kind of in my face on the backstretch, and then really in my face when coming around the bend back to the frontstretch. Thirty-six laps of this? We’ll see…

I started the first repeat. I think I could have used a longer warm up today; my legs were still freezing cold, and the time showed it. I was aiming for 3:25 per repeat today, and the first one clocked in at 3:34. Ouch!

I did a recovery lap, and then ran the second repeat. I felt more completely warmed up by the time I finished that one, in 3:26. Much better.

The next few repeats got progressively faster — 3:24, 3:23 and 3:22 for the fifth one. Unfortunately, the wind was also getting progressively stronger.

The sixth and seventh repeats fell off a little, coming in at 3:23 and 3:24, but I managed to turn it back up for the last one, finishing the eighth repeat in 3:21, my best of the day.

After one more recovery lap, I drank some water, and then ran two more easy miles for a cool down. By the time I was doing my cool down, the wind had picked up to the point the gusts were almost driving me to a standstill when it was in my face.

While I was running the cool down, I tried to think back to a year ago at this time, to how this same workout went before last year’s Shamrock Marathon. I figured out it never happened, because I couldn’t run at this time a year ago, due to that weird pain in my right foot. That put things in perspective a little — the weather might truly suck right now, but at least I can run.

Anyway, this afternoon, they’re running the Daytona Duels (formerly the Gatorade Duels; I can’t keep up with this title sponsor nonsense), to set the rest of the field for Sunday’s Daytona 500. Bobby’s in the first one, which starts at 2 p.m. I got to watch these races last year, but today I have to work, so I’ll be following them online.