Improvisation

When it comes to running, you have to be flexible, and this fact doesn’t just apply to stretching various muscles. It also applies to training. You have to know when to run hard and when not to, and sometimes, when a member of your group is feeling good and decides to push the pace, you have to be ready to roll with it. Such was the case last night.

After doing a hilly six miles followed by five laps of straightaways hard and turns easy on the track Tuesday night (where we hit the final 4 laps in 5:41 and the last lap in 79), the plan for last night was a medium long run of 11 miles at a steady pace, steady meaning 7 min pace give or take 10 sec (or at least so I thought). Things started out innocently enough with a couple miles a little over 7 min. Somewhere after that things started to go awry, however, leading Andrew to state “this isn’t supposed to be another progression run.” Sensing Andy fully intended to push the pace, something he later owned up to, I replied “let’s wait until after the run and see what we call it,” and sure enough the fun was on. Miles 4-6 were all around 6:30, followed by a couple at 6:20 or better, and finally two that wound up under 6:00. We finished out with a 7:01 mile and called it a night, having averaged just over 6:30/mile for 11 miles and definitely turning it into a progression run. All in all it was a really solid workout in warm, humid conditions, and I felt good throughout, so definitely no complaints from me about “improvising” the schedule.

Today will be a ridiculously easy day in preparation for a workout tomorrow night with Andrew. We’re planning on doing something shorter (as in 400-1200m intervals) and I’ll be quite honest in saying that I’m scared. I’m not worried about injury or anything and this is actually an area I really want to work on with my training, but having not run anything even remotely fast in forever, I know I’m going to suffer and also completely embarrass myself. Oh well. It’s all part of the process.

Anyway, I’ll conclude by saying that I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made over the past couple weeks, and I’m also really enjoying training at the moment. I’m tired, but I’m feeling pretty good and thanks to having some good guys to run with I’m having a lot of fun. If things continue along this path, I’m pretty confident I’ll eventually get back in shape. It’ll take a while, but I’ll get there, and for a change I’m looking forward to the journey.