cross-training; 3K fartlek

After Saturday's somewhat disastrous 14K, Jim decided that I should have an extra day of cross-training. I'm too smart (? or something?) to argue with my coach, and besides, he's usually right. So I did the elliptical 30 min and the bike 15 min each day on Sunday and Monday. My legs were a bit sore on Saturday and Sunday, and it was possibly a bit of the weird soreness....i.e. the mystery illness. But we also did a long drive Saturday and a shorter drive Sunday, and sitting always does bad things to me, so honestly I think it was the drive. So does Jim. But just to be safe, an extra day of cross-training.

Today I got to do a track workout :). I was kind of psyched for it, weirdly. Maybe it's because I'm in San Diego and at sea level and it's not cold at all. In fact, it's lovely here. I mean, we're having a warm winter in Salt Lake, but it's nothing like a San Diego winter. I lived here in San Diego for 6 years (undergrad at UCSD and two years after that, working for Invitrogen back when it was a small company), and I've missed it ever since. We have settled into life in Salt Lake City now and I don't really want to move to San Diego any more, but I have to admit that visiting here for a week now and then is very, very nice.

But I digress. The track workout. I did a short warm-up of only 1200m because I was worried about parking (it's free only until 7am and I was pushing that; I probably left at 7:10am and fortunately I didn't get a ticket). I felt OK on the warm-up but a bit intimidated by the large number of people at the track. There were probably 20 runners there doing workouts, and a lot of them were pretty good. But they were quite nice, and didn't seem to mind me using lane 1 when I actually started my fartlek. It looked like they were a lot of triathletes (some of them were spinning by the start line) and many of them were middle-aged or older, though some were younger. A nice crowd; I heard one of them say "speed walking" and smiled inwardly.

My fartlek went really well this morning. I felt strong and good, and my recoveries were better than they have been. I have to say that track workouts at sea level always feel easier. In any case, I was almost 20 seconds faster than last week, which was great. My times were 2:50.2, 2:54.4, 3:06.4, 2:54.7, 3:06.6, 2:49.8 (yes, I really worked that last 500!) for a total of 17:42. I left my HR monitor in Salt Lake by mistake...sigh...but I was working hard and felt good. I'm glad that I felt good today and that I'm improving, though I will admit that I'm a bit worried that the increase in speed was all due to altitude. Ah well, you can't have everything. I enjoyed the workout and am fortunate to be healthy enough to do it, and that's what matters.

Garmin data here. 

Photo of me at the track - it's really a nice track!