Sauna

31 C and it's only April!

After a rather zombie-like existence at work, I woke up back at home craving a workout. It was too hot for the dog, even for a walk, and so I had no excuse not to use the TM. And then, once I got going, I decided to try a few faster intervals.

6 X 1 min fast/1 min recovery. What "fast" was, I have no clue. The display still lacks fresh batteries. But I wasn't after numbers anyway. I wanted to recapture the fluid floating fast pace I'd experienced earlier, and I did. I stretched out and kept things light. Mind you, by the 6th interval, fatigue was accumulating, but it was a relatively effortless workout.

During the intervals, I thought about the usual type of running training, the traditional VO2 max workouts and tempo runs, and sprints, that kind of thing. What I was doing didn't seem to follow one of these workouts, but it felt like a good biomechanical exercise, and it felt right. Perhaps that's the key. My running hobby is at least a decade old, and I've trained for several races with a bunch of hard workouts that were pretty much the same: hard. The more one pushes, the stronger one gets, no pain, no gain, etc. What if that is actually counteractive? Is speed best invited, not forced? What if, instead, I managed to get used to going fast and easy instead of fast and hard? Would this work? It would feel better, at least!

Total today: 5 miles plus exercises afterward.
Yesterday: 3 miles

I still have a few weeks left of the early mornings, but for the time being just 4 more days because then I go home for a week (sibling's wedding). I will hopefully catch up on sleep--definitely, sleep in past 5:00!--and enjoy at least a few flat and true spring runs.