speedwork! (relatively)

After a couple of days of walking, I figured I was fit enough for speedwork. I had planned to go to run club, but then I took the leftover capon, made broth and then made soup, and then figured that I could have soup after my run two hours earlier AND run in daylight if I went at 4 instead of 6. So I was on my own.

I think I would have been on my own anyway. It was a blizzard out there. I don't think I would have heard the coach's whistle. I barely heard my Garmin beep: I programmed the workout: 3-5 X 4 min fast, 2 min recovery.

I did 4 repeats at about 9:40-10:00/mile. Yes, that was fast. A few inches of snow and strong winds more of it into my eyes bogged me down. But I kept pushing and kept my breathing up and it was strangely satisfying to push against something else other than myself. It seems that my muscles are usually too inflamed to maintain an elevated aerobic effort for long, but with the added resistance of the snow, I somehow got a good workout. It felt comfortable to run in the snow, too. After a while, of course, I got tired of sliding sideways, but I was expecting it to be a lot harder.

Looking at my log, I see that in January, I was doing 800M at about 2 min/mile faster in blizzard like conditions (mysteriously, blizzards happened quite a few time on run club day), but that was on the Hill with some/most of it plowed. The club usually does speedwork there because it's one of the first--if not the first--to get plowed, and they keep the plows going there. Today, I was totally 100% on unplowed stuff.

I'm definitely feeling more optimistic about training. It'll be a very good sign if I don't feel too beat up tomorrow.

I'm still not at the point of running every day, and that might not happen for a while. I've resumed core work and yoga after last week's illness/break.