Monday: 45 min elliptical. Was pretty stressed out over a bunch of stuff - busyness at work and at home :/. Legs felt fine.
Tuesday: 8K fartlek. I did a quick warm-up of only 1200m because I was running a bit late (what else is new?). My legs felt quite good prior to arriving at the track, and good on warm-up. I knew I'd be slow but just wanted to finish. OK, that's not completely true. I didn't want to be slow. In fact, I couldn't get my mind to stop ruminating on all the reasons that I shouldn't bother doing this. I admit that I'm mentally weak and that I need to change that in order to be more competitive. But I'm just being honest here about how I was feeling. I thought about how much faster many of the ladies in my new age group (W45-49) are, and about how even if I'm trained up as well as I can, I have no hope at beating many of them. In the U.S. that's not true so much, but I'm talking internationally. I know I shouldn't let that get to me, but it's hard not to think that, especially right now when I'm already lacking in motivation. Anyway, enough whining. Now that it's later in the day and I've had some time to think about it, I realize that I enjoy the competition no matter what, and I also know that winning is definitely not everything. Being fit, enjoying the wonderful people I've met doing this sport, and having the chance to travel and race is fantastic. Winning really is the icing on the cake. Icing is very good though :).
OK back to the fartlek. My coach reminded me that this is just like starting all over again, and it really is. I looked back and in the last two years I have done exactly TWO 8K fartleks. In 2013, I did one in January. In 2014, I did one on March 3. That's it. Wow. I have been REALLY really OUT of the game. I knew that on one level, but on another level, I had chosen not to think about it because it was too painful.
I started off conservatively on the fartlek, knowing that 8K was a long way for me right now for speed work. I did 2:53.2 and 2:56.5 for the first 1km, hard effort. Here are all of my splits:
| 02:53.2 |
| 02:56.5 |
| 03:07.8 |
| 02:56.0 |
| 03:11.3 |
| 02:57.6 |
| 03:12.8 |
| 02:58.2 |
| 03:09.1 |
| 02:57.6 |
| 03:13.3 |
| 02:59.0 |
| 03:14.1 |
| 02:58.5 |
| 03:14.0 |
| 02:57.1 |
The hard effort 500s range from 2:53.2 to 2:59.0, and the medium effort 500s range from 3:07.8 to 3:14.1. Pretty slow, but it's a start I guess. Total time 48:56.0, with ave HR 160. I was working plenty hard. In 6-8 weeks I'm hoping this will be at least 1-2 min faster, hopefully two, assuming I can train hard. After this weekend's half marathon (easy pace), we are going to change things up next week and do a bit shorter long day (15K-ish) and add in a day of speed work. I think that's a good plan, as my legs have no speed whatsoever right now. I appreciate my coach and his good advice in that regard.
Oh, and the weather is glorious today. It's an amazing spring day; it was a very nice and warm 11.1C (52F) at the track this morning, and it's in the mid-70s now. Ahhhh. Here are some of my cheerful flowers that I looked at this morning after my workout to try and improve my mood :).
Edited to add: NO weird soreness at all today. YES!!! I'm VERY happy about that. Really, that's the best news out of all of this. I'm healthy and can train. It's been a LONG time in coming.
Edited to add: NO weird soreness at all today. YES!!! I'm VERY happy about that. Really, that's the best news out of all of this. I'm healthy and can train. It's been a LONG time in coming.
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