sick/speedwork

I woke up with a cold...probably a combo of the 1/2 and a short night of sleep after that. Fortunately, I didn't have to work much today, so got to spend much of the day sleeping, eating, drinking, and studying, which led to more sleeping. Not that it wasn't interesting. I'm especially intrigued by otoliths. Still, I used to be a little bit concerned that studying makes me drowsy, but then I learnt in one of my courses that we have a better chance of retaining facts if they aren't displaced by subsequent distractions. The best time to study is just before one goes to sleep.

Trust your body, eh?

Anyway, I was going to run with the dog, but he got a short walk instead. I debated skipping run club, but 800M repeats seemed reasonable, as long as I took them slowly. Plus, the cold wasn't major and it would do me good to raise my core temp.

Turns out our coach gave us the option, if we'd raced this past weekend, of jogging several miles instead, but this didn't seem attractive to me. I didn't want to move more than a few minutes at a time, lol, and my jogging speed seems to be pretty slow in comparison to everyone else's in the group. When I jog, I take it easy. I don't breathe much harder than when I'm walking most of the time. I used to do my 'easy' runs a bit faster, but I really needed to relax this summer, and I really like the zone I get into when I'm just skimming along. And looks like my race times haven't suffered any for it--on the contrary!

Anyway, I went for the 800M repeats, and took them somewhat gently at first, keeping things loose and streamlined:

3:42
3:45
3:40
3:42
3:49
3:41
3:38
3:36
3:37
3:31

And then halfway through I started running with one of my fellow neo-gazelles (there's a few of us who are at roughly the same pace and we've determined that we're not quite gazelles) and she inspired me to step it up a bit. Plus, the bugs were out and I didn't want them to catch me.

It felt good. I try to make these interval sessions count, but every so often it's nice to slack just a little and enjoy going faster without hurting. It's like a preview: if I keep training, one day that pace will feel that easy for hours. Maybe.

The total I ran was about 10.35 miles.

Now I'm typing this on my floor in a modified yin yoga pose...gecko. I can't type in dragon. I've been slacking on the stretching recently, and I think it's starting to show (or feel, you know). There's like 9 weeks left before the marathon, then I can slack.

Now, I just read my friend's blog, and that's gotten me thinking about me buying new running shoes...won't NB shoes last because they won't, or because I've been told that they won't? They still feel ok. Maybe they'll age gracefully like my old pair of Attacks, which are admittedly falling apart (my dog helped with that during his separation anxiety phase last year), but I still run comfortably in them. The only reason why I've backed off the pumas is that they seem to have gotten stiffer with age. And I once got more than 1000K on a pair of Asics...there's probably more than that on those Attacks, but undocumented. lol. Anyway, I'll mull it over.