Highs and Lows

Long time, no post!  Just been really busy 🙂

This past week was pretty odd.  I had one of my best workouts and one of my worst.

High:
Completing a brutal track workout and NAILING my paces for the first time in a very, very long time.  Do you know how long Jerry has been writing 3:15 as my target paces for 1000s?  A long time.  I have always struggled to make them faster than 3:19.  Typically they’re 3:22 or so.
So after 3×1 mile in 5:30 (done in 5:30, 5:29, 5:31 – wow, consistency), I embarked on 3×1000.

And averaged 3:15 :).  I was SO excited!  3:13 (WOW!), 3:15, 3:17.  What a workout!  I went home with a smile on my face 🙂

Low:
4×2 mile mid-week.  I tried this Tuesday, but knew it was going to be bad  when Craig was pulling away from me on the warm up.  Uphills took everything out of me.  How can this be? All of last week I felt great & I haven’t been pushing too hard.  Usually feeling terrible fatigue in my legs like this comes after a while of pushing, not doing well, etc.  To go from a high high to a very low low is a little unique.

So we scrapped it and tried it again the next day.  I was a little better, but still… I don’t even know what my paces were because I haven’t dug through my watch for them.  I think it’ll just make me feel worse, so I’ll ignore them for a while.  The legs just could NOT turn over.  Craig said at one point that his turnover was higher than mine.  Imagine a wheel rolling down the street when it’s just about run out of momentum.  Still rolling, but going ever slower.  Those were my legs.  I wasn’t even able to make them turn over faster to try to make my lungs feel like they should.  Hate these types of days.

But – the one good thing that came out of the low was that Craig stole my watch for the last mile.  I was then able to just concentrate on effort.  C’mon, this is for the Trials.  You have to hurt as bad as you can if you want to make it there! 

It made me realize that qualifying for the Trials is a very powerful motivator and visual for me when training.  I’ve been struggling a bit to be as in love with Fargo as I know I need to be.  I’m not sure why.  My family will be up there watching (they aren’t able to watch often), and it would be awesome to run for the overall win and potentially course record (2:41:52 – so I would need to be in wicked shape & have a great day at this point.  Still possible, but originally when I made that my goal I was much faster/more fit.  Coming off of my terrible base/lack of strength when I left RWSC, well, I have a lot more work to do than I originally thought).  But I’m glad to have something that motivates me like big goals do.  It makes me smile and makes me want to get out of bed every day to push harder.  Nothing better than big goals that do that for you 🙂

All for now, peeps! Ron Daws 25k tomorrow to help me get through a 22-23 mile workout.  It’s supposed to be 40 degrees, 10 mph winds, and rainy. Super. This spring has just sucked.

Question: What have been your highs or lows (or both!) this week?