Post interrupted

Half of last night's spring run post disappeared into the internet! My fault, I did it the wrong way. In addition to my odyssey on spring running, I tried to do a quick summary of my speed work efforts. So I'll remedy that now.

Wednesday is speed work day, and yesterday had 800s on the schedule. Instead of going out into the dark morning, I waited until afternoon so I could enjoy the daylight and sunshine. Also I wanted to have enough time to finish without worrying about being late for work.

I planned to do 9 x 800, but ended up with eight instead. That is because (hahaha) I dilly-dallied too much before I started, spent too much time trying to take pictures of cherry trees with my phone, and ran out of time. The time deadline was solely due to my desire to stop at Starbucks on the way home. Starbucks closes at 7:30, and after 3.5 mile warm-up, I arrived at the track around 6:30. That allowed only an hour to complete the 800s plus the recovery jogs between laps. That's not much time for someone with my kind of pace.

Plus, I will say that (as per usual) I was not thrilled about doing the 800s and had the usual trepidation about whether I could do it. Once again, I just talked myself into doing a few, then seeing how much time I had left.

Amazingly, despite my nerves, my legs worked great. My first half mile (which was a little long at .51 mile) was 3:59 and a pace of 7:46. I did a quarter mile recovery jog after each of the first four 800s. My paces on 2-4 were 7:57, 7:52, and 7:57 again. Then on #5 I hit a 7:51 pace.

By that time, though, I saw my time melting away. I decided to shorten my recovery jogs to save a little time. After #5 I cut the recovery to point .20 mile. My next 800 was my slowest, .51 mile in 4:03, which was exactly an 8:00 pace. Then .10 recovery. #7 - 7:56 pace. It appeared that I had time for one more 800, so I increased the recovery jog to .20 and rocked the final half mile at a 7:47 pace. Hurrah!

I jogged the remaining third of a mile to Starbucks and collected a celebratory mocha using one of my free drink cards. Total distance for the evening - 9.33 miles.

I ran again this morning even though Thursday is not a typical running day. I want to take off Friday (which is normally a running morning) to freshen my legs for the 30K I am doing on Saturday. This morning my legs were tired and my quads were achy. The first couple miles I couldn't even break an 11-minute pace. Eventually I warmed up to about a 10:15 sort of pace for the remaining miles, finishing 7.78 miles in 1:22:46 (average pace 10:36). I started super early this morning too, before 6 a.m., because I wanted to get to work early.

This is my last "big" week before Boston. Next week I start my version of a taper.