Practice To Suffer So Racing Becomes Easy

Today I woke up in a funk and it just didn't get any better.  My day started with my 2 year old son biting me in the side and me flying out of bed screaming!  The rest of the day was one of those dreary days that make you want to crawl back into bed, but the days of doing that are long past me now that I have a son.  So I dragged myself to the coffee maker and found the next best thing to revive my body.  I would have gone for an am run to clear the mind, but I didn't want to push the week seeing as how I'm already on pace to go over a 10% increase in mileage and the humidity levels today were 93-95%, plus I had a feeling tonight was going to be tough.  Although, I finally broke down and went out for a 1 miler with my son after lunch.  It felt good to get out of the house push the little flesh eater around. I was definitely on edge all day.  Maybe it had something to do with a little anxiety about tonight's workout 5x1 mile intervals or maybe it was just a little over training, maybe a combination of both.  My new friend Karen met me at the track for her first interval workout since the Fort Atkinson 1/2 marathon.  We talked about her pacing and came up with a nice workout at 1/2 marathon pace for her.  She did a great job!  My work out on the other hand wasn't even close to being on the mark for me.  I was supposed to go 2x1mile at 5:33-5:40 and 3x1 mile @ 5:18-5:26 pace and instead I hit 5:42 and 5:44.  I thought to myself okay that's fine just settle in and start cranking it like I normally do for my 3x1 mile at 5:18-5:26 pace.  My legs felt good, but my lungs just couldn't take it.  I hit 5:38, 5:41 and at that point I was going to call off the last one thinking I'm way too off to justify doing the last.  I gave it a 2nd thought thinking it had more to do with the humidity than an off day, so I gutted out the last one for a 5:47 (at this point my shoes felt like boat anchors due to the flood my body was producing).  I'm questioning now that maybe my 4:50 mile race isn't a good indicator of a jump in fitness, or maybe my new fitness was spoiled with the hard 16 miler I ran on Tuesday.  It's hard to say, but I sure hope my 400's and 200's go better on Saturday so I can have some confidence going into my 5k race on Tuesday. 

Rather than feel bad about this workout I'm going to take away the positives! 

I completed the workout without injury.

I helped another runner complete a hard workout on a bad weather day.

God gave me the opportunity to spend a full day with my son.