Having put in a 16 hour day at the law school yesterday, I allowed myself the luxury of sleeping in today. I don’t do it often, so it was a nice to stay in the warm, comfy bed another hour or two.
Unfortunately, that meant I was at the Y when it opened. Which, in turn, means the track was much more crowded with walkers, oblivious patrons, and one extremely rude girl who insisted on cutting me off each time she sprinted by – she nearly tripped me twice.
Annoying on any day, but today was my 10 mile LSD run for the week…
Since I was so tired and was going in for an LSD run, I opted for a pre-workout gel. Today I pulled out a vanilla PowerGel I received as while I was coaching in the fall. The taste was acceptable, if a little sweet. The problem, however, was the consistency. The PowerGel is so thin that it oozes everywhere and made my hands sticky. Not a good way to start the workout.
A little static stretching, a little dynamic stretching, some warmup laps, then off to the workout…
Today’s training run: 10mi LSD run (8:00/mi).
I decided that I wanted to make sure that I hit my splits all the way through, so I decided to aim for 7:30-7:45/mi so that if I slowed during the last miles I wouldn’t be over my pace goal. As it turns out, not a bad choice. I found myself “feeling slow” several times and the Garmin showed I was up in the 7:50s. If I had been aiming right on the target pace I would have been way too slow.
I had to drop down to HMP for a bit to keep the rude girl behind me during her sprints in the middle of the run. Why somebody would place themselves in a position where another runner is about the slam into their back is beyond me. Especially when I was running a 10 mile pace and she was doing ~50m sprints.
It was nice to know that I could drop down to HMP on a moment’s notice and then ease back into LSD pace, though. I don’t think it will become part of the routine, however. :p
The sun finally returned to NW Ohio today, so that means melting ice! If it looks good tomorrow, I am dying to go out for a trail run tomorrow. The (shifted) schedule has a 5mi easy run, so I could handle damp trails – just no ice, please. Fingers crossed.
