There are days in winter when you can smell spring coming. You know it is still winter, but somewhere under there, you can smell, hear, feel spring. And it feels good. You know there still be days where the wind bites and your fingers feel like they are going to fall off, but ... it is coming. Today was one of those days. Temps hit the 40s in the afternoon, and for once, with little wind.
And in my own regard, I could smell my own spring coming. While I am still significantly slower in speed than I was a few years ago, I could feel, smell and hear some "spring" coming out.
I did the 200-200-400 workout (200 on, 200 recovery, 200 on, 200 recovery, 400 on, 400 recovery ... each set is a mile and I did five sets). I last did this workout in December. I decided early to not worry about the rests at all, and instead to focus on the turnover of the workout - and the speed in the repeats. My abdominal pain had subsided a bit today (let's say yesterday it was a 5, today it was a 2). I could feel it a bit in my gut when I was on the repeat, but it was not greatly hindering me. When I last did a track speed workout, I was doing 36 on the 200s and 75s on the 400s. Today, I managed 34s-35s on the 200s and 71 mid on the 400s. I tried to focus on turnover, running tall, moving well but not straining. I could smell a bit of the speed coming back (for me). I certainly have work to still do in this area but this is nice progress. I did a few stride counts during a couple of the quarters and it was coming in at or near 50 (significantly different than slower runs!).
Full run was 10 over 80 minutes (2.5 warmup, 2.5 warm down)
