As we finished today’s workout a girl gushed — deservedly so — about how much she’d improved. (I think her name was Meredith; she introduced herself to me and was really nice and said lots of nice things about my writing and my blog so I really suck at life for not remembering it for certain, but if I had to bet money, I’d go with Meredith. And she’s probably reading this right now thinking, “Yeah, you do suck at life.”)
Her face glowed a little bit and she grinned a lot and you could tell she was pretty giddy. We were doing speed work, running laps and timing ourselves on it. Her times were in the 1:35 (one minute thirty-five seconds) range, way down from the 1:55 times she was putting up a couple weeks ago.
“Youth,” said Brian Campbell.
“Youth,” agreed Ben Bowie. He held up his fingers a half an inch apart. “They can do this much work” — then he spread his hands a couple feet apart — “And get this much progress. We do this much work” — his hands are still two feet apart….then he pinches his fingers together again — “And we get this much progress.”
I’m way less external so I didn’t really emanate all the happiness she was, but dude, I felt it. It was an awesome morning, which is pretty weird and cool because I usually really hate run mornings.
You know, nearly three months in, you’d think I’d have it figured out by now. As hard as it is to wake up, it’s that worth it when the workout’s finished. You really would think that would have clicked by now. I mean, really.
I slept until the last possible minute again, getting out of bed around 5:50 for a 6 a.m. workout. Well, I slept until my alarm went off at 5:30 then hit the snooze three times. Katie still doesn’t appreciate that, but she got a new job and she has to be in at 7 a.m. anyway, so it’s good for her. As it works out, that’s been good for me too. We’re going to bed by 10, 10:30 now. It’s like we’re old people.
No offense, old people. But for us young whippersnappers, 10 p.m. is way early. And Sunday night, we were actually in bed by 9:30. I swear, it’s like we’re….30!
OK, enough with the lame jokes about being young and spry.
It really was too bad our faithful running coach, LeAnne, was sick this morning. She missed some people running really fast. It would have made her proud.
She texted all of us with our assignment (at 1:30 a.m., I might add, the crazy person): 4×400 at a 5K pace, then 4×400 five seconds faster, then 2×400 sprints, with a 200-yard rest between them all. In other words, we run four individual laps at the pace we’d run a 5K, resting for half a lap between each lap. Same deal for four more laps, only faster. Then we sprint a couple laps to end the day.
I’ve begun considering myself more of a short-distance speed guy. Not that I’d win any 100-yard sprint competitions, but I can roll for a lap or two. Distance-wise, I like running three to four miles. But I’m so not a fan of half-marathon or marathon-length runs.
So I always expect short distance days to go well. I didn’t expect today to go as well as it did.
I paced with a guy named Ian, who can absolutely fly. (Cool side note: the WAC will be his first triathlon, too.)
(Other side note: Friday is the last day to change our swim times for the WAC tri, so remind me to do that after I test my 100-yard swim time tomorrow.)
Anyway, Ian and I flew. Our 5K pace was so not a 5K pace. I think we ran those laps in around 1:30. If I tried running a 5K at that pace I’d be gassed halfway through.
Then we somehow beat that for the next set, rolling in around 1:20-1:25. It was crazy to me how strong I felt. Yeah, about halfway through the workout my legs started getting rubbery for the laps’ last 100 yards or so, but I never really wanted to quit. I felt like a machine, almost, just pumping and pumping. I could accelerate whenever I wanted to, but I was actually pacing myself, and pacing myself fast. (You probably remember I’ve had problems pacing myself. I get impatient. I want to be done, like, an hour ago. So I run too fast then burn out too fast then start making lame excuses why I can’t keep running too fast.)
But today, there were no lame excuses. I was a little lame for not running my last sprint, but I didn’t care, because of how I ran my first sprint.
I thought I’d started out too fast. Then I felt my left shoe come untied. In the past, those two things would have been reasons enough for me to slow up and let Ian pass me and just dog it for the lap. Not today, though. I remember back in my baseball days getting that feeling of “being in the zone.” That’s sort of how I felt today. Part of me doesn’t want to talk it up too much because in my mind, it’s just running.
(Running/swimming/biking have always felt like just preparation for sports for me. That’s always how we conditioned for baseball, with one of those three. It preceded the sport; it wasn’t the sport; thus it didn’t truly matter, at least not to me. I did well enough to please the coach and get something out of it, but it was never something I focused too much on. Now, though, I’m starting to embrace it as a sport, as something competitive to do. I’ve quit fighting the feeling that this is just what unathletic nerds do. I know, it’s horrible, but I’ve had that feeling a few times. How crappy of a person am I? Except I am learning and growing, and yeah, I’m really embracing it. That’s also making it way more fun. And it’s way better than doing nothing but sitting on the couch eating Crunch bars and watching sports and remembering when I was good at them. Now I’m getting good at something else. It’s good to get good at things. It’s healthy. It grows you up, and growing is the only way to live life.)
Anyway, sorry about that uber-long Sneedthetical (a Sneed parenthical ramble), but some thoughts and feelings apparently needed to get out there.
(Don’t get me wrong, I still love sports. Joining a softball league, actually. Droppin’ bombs, yayuh. Sorry, done…)
Anywayyy, running … my last sprint was phenomenal, at least for me, and I feel like with another workout or two, I could beat it. I beat Ian. Only by a couple steps, but I beat him. (So what if he beat my time by four seconds the next lap?) I finished that lap in 1:12. That’s one minute, 12 seconds. That’s unbelievable compared to where I was back in January. Back in January I was sucking wind half a lap into the runs. It took me 8:30 to run a mile.
Now laps and miles are just challenges, just something to be run faster and faster and faster.
Sorry for the crazy long post this morning. It was just that good of a morning. Even if I didn’t run my last sprint and someone called me a lazy ass. Darn right, I was a lazy ass. Darn right, I skipped my last lap. I felt that good. Also, I felt that tired.
I know that a week from now – heck, a day from now, probably – I’ll be wanting to beat that. I won’t feel this good about that because heck, it’s already been accomplished.
But this morning, I feel that good.
