HALLELUJAH A Decent Track Workout + Impending Races.

On Tuesday I met Kimra at Kezar Track for an evening speed workout. Given last week's suck-tastic track session and how concerningly sore & exhausted my Sunday 11 miler left me (particularly in the hips/hip flexors), I'd been stressing about this workout for days. What if it sucked? What if the stress fracture place hurt? What if I couldn't hold the pace? What if those ass-hats started stretching in lane 4 again???

All this was compounded by the fact that the Garmin 310XT I got (for 40%!) last fall suffered a crack in the housing this last weekend that made it so that the strap wouldn't stay attached to the watch part, which meant that I had to go exchange it at REI. And this is why you buy your GPS watch at REI, btw; if anything happens to it within a year--seriously, ANYTHING--you get a free replacement. Unless they don't carry that item anymore, in which case you get the amount you paid for the item as a credit towards a similar item.

Since they don't carry the 310XT anymore, I ended up paying the $87 difference for a Forerunner 220 because it was the closest thing they had (that wasn't $450), and as of Tuesday track time, I had yet to figure out exactly how to use it.

Garmin Forerunner 220

Except for the fact that it's not a multi-sport, the 220 is supposed to be pretty comparable to the 305 & 310? I guess? I'll give it points for being thinner & lighter, but I do not like the display or the way navigating through the different options & settings works. I've only had it for two days, though, so it may just be that the 305/310 interface is burned into my brain at this point & it's just going to take some time to get used to something else.

Like last week my Achilles/lower calves were a bit tight & I did stop a couple of times during my warm-up to stretch & shake them out, but everything else felt great. Kimra & I briefly kvetched to one another about the evils of sports bras & heart rate monitors & then took off on our intervals. (I'd insert a picture here but we were kinda busy, y'know, marathon training or whatever.)

My plan called for six 400m repeats at 6:40 pace (so ~1:40 each) with 90 seconds jog recovery. I couldn't remember for sure off the top of my head but 6:40 sounded slower than I usually do these, but honestly I'd already resolved to run them by effort, so I wasn't too concerned about the numbers.

Curse you, repeat #5! I was *this* close to perfect negative splits!!

All six intervals definitely required not-insignificant effort, but counting to 90 in my head between each one (apparently faster and faster) was plenty of time to recover in between, and I finished the set feeling like I could have easily run more if I'd had to. So yeah; GIANT win in terms of track workouts that feel the way they're supposed to, without making you feel like you want to die.

I did look back in my RunningAhead log to see how fast I've run this workout in the past, but it turns out that the last time was Nov. 12, 2013, otherwise known as the Day that Will Live in Infamy, ie the day that after repeat #4 of 6 I discovered my duffel bag had been stolen. So I only got to four 400m's that day, but I was apparently doing them in the 6:00-6:10 pace range & I don't recall them being that hard. Then again I wasn't running all that much at that point, so the difference between then & now is probably partly attributable to fitness but also partly attributable to working much harder now than I was then.

(Oh, and the group with zero track etiquette only expanded their circle to lane three today, so I was able to avoid getting almost-kicked by people swinging their legs around in the middle of the track. Small victories.)

IMPENDING RACES:

I am registered as a sub-seed in the San Francisco Marathon 2nd Half on July 27, for the second time in as many years. Unfortunately last year I couldn't run it since I was busy regrowing a muscle & learning to walk up stairs, so I am super pumped to finally do it this year. I was registered for it way before Santa Rosa, so it made me happy to learn that a solid four weeks lies between the two races.

Being sub-seeded kinda-sorta makes me feel like I should actually RACE-race, but since a) I haven't been training for a half and b) I care a lot more about Santa Rosa, I'll most likely end up running it in the just-fast-enough-to-have-fun range rather than balls-to-the-wall-effing-kill-it range. I'm supposed to do a 16 miler that day, so depending on logistics I'll either do a 1.5 mile warm up & a 1.5 mile cool down, or jog an easy 3 miles to the start & BART home from the finish.

Also, this week is Pride Week in San Francisco, & I've run the SF FrontRunners Pride Run 5K or 10K every year since I've lived in SF except for last year (see above-mentioned regrowing of muscle/regaining of basic motor skills), so I would really like to run it this Saturday as well. I need to run 7-8 miles that day, so I think if I ran it I'd end up doing an easy run on Friday instead of a tempo/threshold, then running a 4-4.5 mile warm-up before the race & then running the 5K at just-fast-enough-to-have-fun pace.

And....I got another pair of shoes. (I KNOW SHUT UP.) They came on the recommendation of a couple of different friends, cost me $40 on giant super clearance, and they are black. (I have never owned a pair of black running shoes before & it feels very strange.) I've only run in them twice, but so far they feel pretty good, so things are off to a promising start.