Maria's Running Blog

First day at my new job. Long day, got home only about 8 with bad stomach pains. I was very hungry, so I ate and felt better. But by the time my stomach settled down a bit, it was already after 9. So there went my run.

The commute is awful - min. 1:30 with tube, train and shuttle bus involved. 3 hours a day down the drain. But I like the job, and maybe I will be able to spend 2 days a week at a customer site, depending of course, where the customer will be! I'll also have to do some travel to Germany to the company's headquarters.

Left work half hour earlier, and stomach felt better today, so I managed to get out around 8PM. The plan was to do 6x800m with equal or near equal time recovery. It was pouring rain and getting dark, but I got to the track and started the workout. It was one of the hardest workouts I had in a long time. I felt slow already on the warmup, 9:24 pace, that's very slow for me on the warmup. The trend just continued on. Plus, the cinder track was very soft from the rain, and my shoes felt like they weighed one pound each (they probably did!). On the last two I was dying big time, and called it quits after 5. I don't know if these were the reasons for slow times, but they were:

800m time	Rest	Comment
3:30	3:03	hard, but ok
3:36	3:05	hard, but still ok
3:45	3:38	very hard and much slower, decided to take more recovery
3:42	3:43	dying last 100m, extremely hard
3:41		again dying last 100m, and first lap was 7:45 pace, ouch! Really dying, so decided to stop.

I haven't run 800s for a long time, maybe I need to build to 7-8 repeats gradually. I also probably should have taken more recovery from the beginning. Oh well, I'm not going to dwell on this workout too much. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better conditions, although the forecast says "rain/wind".

My last workout before leaving for US. It was a strange run, I never had anything like that happen to me before. The plan was to do 3x2000m with 2-3' recovery jog. Target times for 2000s were 9:30-9:12. I started the first one, and felt terrible, heavy legs, a lot of effort, but slow pace. Only managed 9:51 and was tired already! Decided to give myself 3' recovery. On the second one, I decided not to look at Garmin so as to not get more depressed about the slow time.Only looked at it at mid-way, and was shocked to see that I was running much faster than the first repeat, about 7:25 pace. Finished it in 9:21, feeling much better than before. Agan jogged 3', and started on the last repeat. Felt even better than on the second, and ran 9:13, feeling pretty strong. This is very strange, usually these workouts at threshold are very hard for me, and I never run 2nd and 3rd repeat faster than the first. I'm puzzled, but on the other hand, with all the crazy training I've been doing and NOT doing, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. In the end, I was happy how the workout turned around, despite some really bad stomach cramps at the end.