Oh no... A workout!

Until very recently, the smell of stepping on a track made me nauseous.  I think it is the smell of rubber on a hot day.  Luckily the track at Alexander Graham Middle School is not rubberized.  It is also not a true 400m track, which is annoying since you have to run in lane 2.  Doing track workouts without a coach is a very difficult task for me.  Workouts are not fun on your own, and I do not have the discipline to stick with it the whole way.  To me, the most difficult part of a workout is not the speed of the intervals, or even staying at or below a target pace, but actually completing what I set out to do.  In high school, when a race always felt too difficult, I always envisioned how nice it would be to "accidentally" trip and fall or I did not have to complete my race.  Luckily, I never actually brought myself to do that, but when it got too difficult, I almost always wussed out.

I have completed three track workouts since coming back to running, but today's workout was by far the most successful.  With the help of the CRC track meet-up, mainly Dusti (coached by Chris), I completed a track workout that I am almost positive I would have cut short or slowed down on my intervals.  Dusti is getting ready to run her 6th marathon (at age 27) and we run at a very similar pace, and I was extremely happy to find a running partner around my pace.  I usually end up doing workouts or tempos with Eric, which usually turns into a disaster because I do my first interval super fast and then drop back significantly.

Tonight we did 5x1 mile with a 2:30 recovery.  I was pretty nervous about sticking it through to the end, but I also didn't want to embarrass myself at my first group workout.  Dusti's target pace was supposed to be 7:22.  The first mile felt pretty wretched, and I knew we were too fast, but I stuck by her the whole time.  After the first mile, I felt more relaxed and started to find my stride.    Here are our mile intervals:
1- 7:06
2- 7:06
3- 7:09
4- 7:07
5- 7:01

I am going to call our workout today a definite success!  I am having some pain behind my left knee, and one of my toes is bruised (from the 16 miler on Saturday), but overall I am feeling pretty good... except for the greasy pizza I decided to eat afterwords.  Time to make some hot chocolate!