A Little Toe in the Fast Pond

As I type this, the skies are threatening, and I wish the rain would come and go already, rather than just lingering above, likely to let loose as soon as I leave the office on my bike to go to the track to train with my running club for only the second time this year. With some trepidation - and with one ever-sleepy, bleary red eye focused on my next 5K on August 14th - I'm going to take part in our scheduled workout, a mix of intervals and reps. The workout looks like this:

• Warm-up job - 1+ mile
• Stretches, bounding, strides, etc.
• 800m at 5K pace with 1 lap recovery
• 1200m at 5K pace with 1 lap recovery
• 800m at 5K pace with 1 lap recovery
• 4x400 at rep pace (about 5-7 secs faster per 400m than 5K pace), 1 lap recovery
• Cool-down - 1-2 miles, depending on how the legs feel

I plan to run these at a relatively conservative pace, as I do not want to get hurt. I'm slightly fatigued from the weekend's efforts, but I feel pretty good all things considered. It will be great to see some friends, though I have to make myself avoid trying to keep up with the ones with whom I was "even" earlier in the season, or - worse - last year.

I hope that my next entry will be about how well things went, how I held back at first, then opened it up and how I think I can PR during next week's 5K because a near-6:00/mile pace felt easy. Of course, I might as well hope to be writing about being Obama's Veep choice. We'll just have to wait and see.

-ESG