Wind Cycle

It's Friday night, so you know what that means - party time I'm stuck at work covering for someone. The joys of doing the right thing. But alas, it means I get to catch up on my work - and by "work" I mean looking up random things on the internet and reading sports and fitness related magazines. Hey, it's relevant. I work in the field!

I hit the track yesterday for my first track workout of the training period. I haven't run on a track since the last timed mile I had to do for lacrosse in college (shout out to the MU lax crew!) and I haven't done an actual "work out" on a track since those winter track days in high school (shout out to the TP!), so, needless to say, I was a little rusty. Considering the fact that I have been a competitive triathlete for the past, ohhhh five or so years, you would think I would have gotten by ass in gear earlier in terms of all this "speed work", but I have never been the most disciplined person when it comes to an actual plan. I have more of an "all over the place" type of training style, so the fact that I have any kind of training plan at all at this point is a huge step in the right direction.

Let's get back on track (pun intended) - the actual workout was 4x800 repeats at 3:15 followed by 4x400 repeats at 1:30, with a 200 jog/walk between each repeat. I did a mile warm up and a mile cool down, so in total I did somewhere around 6 miles, 3 of which were at a pretty decent clip. Clearly, this is not a pace that I could sustain for 26.2 miles, but I figured if I'm gonna do speed work, I might as well go fast.

I'm not going to say that the workout was awful - any Monmouth Lacrosse player circa 2004-2009 can tell you that Monday running was much worse - but it wasn't a pleasant experience either. Thankfully, I only have to do track workouts one out of every three training weeks, so I won't have to think about this again for another 20 days.

I followed up yesterdays track session with a windy and sneakily hilly 35ish bike ride today. The thing about windy rides is that, when you have the tail wind and are pushing 26 mph, you love it, and then when you hit the turn around - as you inevitably do unless you are lucky enough to be riding a point-to-point and then you never have to worry - and you're hitting the head wind and barely breaking 15 mph, it's absolutely dreadful. Really. When you crest a tough hill in a head wind and STILL have to peddle just as hard on the way down, you know it's gonna be a long ride home. And you almost NEVER get the tail wind home.

All-in-all it was a hard two days worth of work, and my legs are definitely feeling it. I'm supposed to get in a 5 mile marathon race pace run in tomorrow, but I'm back to work early in the morning and then headed into the city for the NYC Triathlon on Sunday and the thought of a 5 am wake-up call for a run tomorrow makes my already drained legs tremble just slightly.

I will, however, be getting in my second double digit run this weekend, as well as giving you a full race report from the NYC Triathlon on Sunday. I am only doing the swim as a last minute relay substitute for a friend but I've never done NYC so I'm looking forward to it. Maybe not so much the "swimming in the Hudson River" bit, but I'm sure I'll survive. I will be wearing a full wetsuit to protect myself from hypodermic needles though. I'm not stupid.