Rough Workout!

True Story, this exchange took place over e-mail Tuesday afternoon before what I expected to be a difficult practice:

Me:
No!!! Do we REALLY have to run 5.1 miles doing effort intervals? 8 on 4 off, 10 on 4 off?! Is he crazy. That's right, I'm already whining....
My mentor Deb:
Buck up little camper, I have something like 10 on 4 off and then 12 on 4 off. :-P Think about it this way. It's only 5 miles, as opposed to the 9 or so you ran on Saturday. :-) See you tonight!!!!!

Aww....what a good mentor. And I am pleased to report that "buck up" I did!! For what it's worth, the intervals that I was referring to consisted of alternating 8 lamposts (about .4 miles) at a pace that requires significantly more effort than usual (we like to focus on effort, not speed, but speed definitely increases relative to the effort) and then 4 lamposts recovering at a slow pace. The reason I was so worried about this workout is: the week before we also did intervals, but we ran the SAME amount of time "on" as we did "off." This week's workout amounted to 2/3 "on" and only 1/3 "off." Suffice to say: this was a difficult run. However, I actually surprised myself by keeping up with other team members and continuing to push myself through the entire workout (5.1 miles). I can actually say it went by really fast because I was so focused on alternating my effort. It's amazing what a little distraction can do for you!

And, as usual, I got up just about 12 hours after this run to run again with Leslie, and somehow I managed to survive that too. This has definitely been a week of growing in the training department, and it will continue through this weekend when I will run 10 miles in Perrysburg!! I think that basically amounts to a lap around town plus some, we'll see what I can find.

Well, thank you for reading. I think next time I will blog a little more about my inspiration in these runs: my honored teammates. Please check back for that, and please click the donate link on the right if you haven't yet. I have raised almost $1,500, but I still have a ways to go to reach my goal!!!

Thank you!!!