Starting over

I feel like I'm starting over from nothing. I guess I am, in a way. This is my first track workout since late August last year. That's 7 months ago but feels like an eternity.

I did a track workout this morning. It was about 60 degrees (warm! 15.5C) and VERY very windy (20 mph?). Every time I came around the final turn of each 400m, the wind socked me in the face and pummeled me relentlessly. On the other side of the track, I am sure I had a tailwind, but I did not feel it much.

I was SO slow. Despite working very hard, I was slow. My coach said to take it at about 85% effort. I probably gave it 90% effort, and I was still unbelievably slow.

I warmed up easy to moderately hard, doing 1600m in 10:21, but starting with a first lap of 2:45 and accelerating from there. Then I did some dynamic flexibility drills to stretch everything out, and started the real meat of the workout. I only had to do 2x2k @ 85% effort with a 4 min recovery. It was hard. 2k is 5 laps of a 400m track. By lap 3 on the first 2k, my legs were Jell-O. Sad.

Here are my 400m splits. I was thinking to do 12:00/2k, which is 2:24/400m. I thought maybe I could maintain that pace. NOT!

First 2K: 2:23, 2:26, 2:27, 2:28, 2:31 for 12:16 (ave HR 155, 164, 166, 167, 166)
Second 2K: 2:25, 2:30, 2:33, 2:32, 2:29 for 12:29 (ave HR 152, 162, 163, 164, 165)

UGH! I was able to do 3x2K in 11:28, 11:30, 11:37 last year. But that was last year.

I promised, though, that I would not beat myself up over this. When I left the track I was pretty bummed out, but then I realized, "Hey, I just GOT to do a track workout - my foot felt good enough to do it!", and "Wow, my foot feels OK!". That made me feel better. My fitness level might be abysmal, but I am able to be out there again. It will come back with some hard training, but it's going to hurt in the meanwhile, and I'm going to be slow. That is a bit hard to deal with, but I'm trying to remain positive. I just hope it comes back in time for the big races in July.

***

I cooled down by walking to my car and then jumping in the pool for a master's swim workout - it took me about 12 min to get from the track to the pool (and I mean IN the pool, swimming!). The swim workout was a good one. 300 warm-up, then 4x(50 kick, 75 free build-up (accelerate)). Then we did 4x100 IM (25 each stroke, on 2:10), 4x50 free (on 1:00), 3x100 IM, 4x50 free, 2x100 IM, 4x50 free. We didn't finish the last 4x50, so I did 2200 yd total. I got a nice compliment from one of the women in the lane who hadn't been in a few weeks - she told me I was getting faster quickly. She was surprised at how much I'd improved in the last 3 wk or so :). I was happy to have swum well today after doing a hard track workout; my legs were tired and my arms had to do more work than usual, especially at the beginning.