Speed Workouts

(I liked this picture of a British police officer preparing to use a phased plasma energy weapon to evaporate cars speeding down a rural English highway. The Brits are such a polite group of people; I'm sure he'll apologize afterward.)

This past week saw the introduction of a new sort of pain into my life. From here on out, Wednesdays are speed workouts at the UVa track. At first glance, it might seem this would be a welcome thing, because it's much shorter than any other workout. This past Wednesday consisted of only 2.6 miles, and was done in well under an hour.

The pain comes from the fact that it's FAST. One mile warm-up at a reasonable speed, then alternating fast laps or half-laps with moderate-paced laps or half-laps. When you normally run at an 8.5 to 9.0 minutes/mile pace, running laps at 6.5 to 7.5 minutes/mile is rough. As always, serious runners will scoff at my pathetic pace, but it's a tough pace for me. It was hard enough at the time, but my failure to properly recover/rehydrate/renutriate (yes, I made that word up) afterward REALLY did me in. I was wiped out for nearly 24 hours. I'll do better next time.

So, looks like Wednesdays will be speedy from now till June. Weeeeeeeeeeee...