Well, today is officially the first day of spring. It would be nice if it felt like spring. Today wasn't the worst weather of the winter because the sun has been out and the temperature has been in the low 40s. However, the wind was still brutal. It is definitely up there with some of the worst wind of the whole winter.
Getting a gauge on the wind before my run was tough. There were some extreme gusts, but not a lot of sustained wind. One moment, it would feel like a great spring day. The next moment, it would feel like winter all over again.
The plan for the day was to try running 800 meter repeats. Since I was planning for some fast running, I went with shorts and a lightweight long sleeve shirt. I probably wouldn't thrown a jacket on over that if I didn't plan on running so hard.
Last week, I ran 5 repeats, so today I was hoping to do 6. I followed a guy out of the parking lot and onto the Saucon Rail Trail. He was definitely overdressed. I was only warming up, but I blew right by him. Having someone there to sort of pull me along probably got my legs going faster at the start.
Normally, I can tell how a fast run will go due to how I feel in the warm up. The wind was a big X factor today though. The legs actually felt great, but I started off running right into a strong head wind. I wasn't working all that hard, but my breathing was still heavy, thanks to the cold air blowing in my face. It wasn't ideal.
I started off into the headwind on my first repeat. It took quite the effort battling the wind. I wasn't sure if I could even last the full 800. I managed to, but it was a pedestrian 7:01 pace. Last week, I started out too fast. That certainly wouldn't happen again this week.
The first repeat was so bad that I considered turning around already and either changing the workout up somehow or scrapping it altogether. I said to myself, let's battle through one more repeat and then we can turn around and have the wind at our back.
The second repeat was even tougher. I had to navigate around a guy on the trail. I just pushed and pushed. The wind was pounding me again though. Also, going out on this trail is slightly uphill. I like that on a calm day, but today it really sucked. I came through that second repeat at an even worse 7:08 pace.
I went out about .1 miles and then turned around to continue with my 400 meter recovery in between reps. I could already tell that going the other direction with the wind at my back would be significantly better. The only real question was whether the first two repeats into the wind took too much out of me.
I started off the third repeat feeling great. This one definitely seemed to go by faster than the first two as well. Before I knew it, I was at .33 miles. From this point on, getting to .5 miles was a little tough in each repeat. I still managed to do it though. Going in this direction, I knew there was no question that I'd at least get another repeat in. The third one was so much faster than the first two. It was a 6:41 pace. I was very happy.
With the wind at my back, I could breath even better during the recovery portions. The same thing happened in the fourth repeat. I was strong at the beginning and faded just a bit towards the end. The windy first two repeats surely took something out of me. Toward the end of this repeat, I began developing a side stitch. Still, I was happy to come through this repeat at an even faster 6:38. These past two repeats are right around where I would hope that I my average pace would be right now on a normal day.
After the fourth rep, I was quite exhausted. I didn't quite know if I had one more in me or not. Just like last week, I decided that I had to at least start this repeat and see how things went. If the tank was running on empty, I would quit. If I felt good, I would press on. I didn't feel great, but the number on my watch was making me happy. At one point, it was under a 6:30 pace. Again, I slid off a bit at the end of the repeat. I definitely need to get a little stronger. The pace for this final one was another pretty consistent 6:42.
I finished up with only a half mile cool down. I didn't want to run any more than that in the wind. A school bus waited for me at a road crossing. That is the second time that happened during this run. I was glad that I didn't have to stop for any traffic, especially during the fast segments. That can really throw things off.
My legs felt pretty good after the run. I took my baseball cap off my head and noticed that it was soaked. I didn't realize how much I was sweating. I felt quite exhausted, so I just sat in the car for a few minutes. It was a good workout.
I didn't get as many repeats as I had hoped for, but I was happy to be more consistent today and not fade as much as last week. Considering the windy conditions, I am happy with how it went. I don't have the endurance that I did in the fall when I had a lot of speedwork under my belt and was running high mileage, but I feel like my raw speed is much better now. That should allow me to run even faster when I begin adapting to fast running. Some good weather would be nice too. For now, I'll just deal with whatever we have.
I'm not sure what the plan is over the next few days. I need to get three more runs in the rest of the week and one of them needs to be at Trexler. I'm also going to a Drexel WNIT game tomorrow night and then to Hershey on Saturday for the high school state basketball tournament. I'll have to figure it all out. I might run in the parkway tomorrow afternoon, since I haven't done it in some time. One thing that is frustrating is that I had two people commit to the group run for tomorrow night, but I won't be there and we won't have a group run leader.
5 miles - 38:12 (7:38 pace)
No comments:
Post a Comment