Surprising Oneself

Sometimes you go into a run not expecting much and spend the hours leading up to the supposed ordeal coming up with alternative plans and justifications for why you might not run the way you were hoping you could. This was one of those times for me, and yet it turned out OK. In fact, it turned out a bit better than OK.

I skipped Mondays regular 5km recovery run because my knees were a bit sore from the Sunday long run and so I'd been itching to run again for a couple of days. That being said, I felt tight, I have not been sleeping well (thanks for nothing Home Run Derby, or should I say Commercial Derby!), and I've been feeling a bit under the weather on top of it all. So as today's interval workout neared I wondered just what I would have to contend with and was resigned to "just get through" and get back to resting and icing.

After looking at the various printouts of marathon training plans on which I loosely base my training I settled on what looked like a decent workout that I thought would be difficult to achieve, but somehow was easy on the brain and achievable for the body. This was to run 3 1-mile repeats with 800m recovery jogs in between. The goal pace was 4:15/km, or roughly 6:51/mile. Given my last two interval workouts I thought that this would be really difficult, but potentially doable. After all I had run 5x800m last week at an average pace of 4:00/km, and the week before that I ran 4x1000m with 1000m meter recovery jogs at an average pace of 4:08/km or so. Moving up in distance (total of 4.8km versus 4.0km) as well as longer interval distances I thought that slowing down to 4:15/km pace was reasonable. That being said, I was feeling a bit worn out and somewhat wonky in the knees. My quads felt tight, glutes ditto, calves yup yup yup. "This is going to hurt," I thought to myself as I left the house once getting back from work.

But then the surprise part started. The easy warm up jog over to the track felt pretty good, though not exactly speedy, and by the time I got to the track I was more optimistic than when I left. I dropped my water bottle on the grass and started into my first interval. The sky was overcast and threatening a bit of rain. A girls soccer game was going on and lots of people and dogs were milling about, but they seemed respectful of the three or four runners who were out there with me and stayed clear. After the first 400m I checked the trusty old Garmin and saw that my pace was hovering a little below 4:00/km pace, much faster than I thought I was going. I said, "Oh Oh!" and wondered how the rest of the mile would go, let alone the other two that I still had in front of me.

The impending doom never happened. I completed the first mile repeat pretty gassed, but not as much as one would expect. I slowly jogged the 800m recovery, dropped the water bottle again, and set off with a mind to running the next mile in the same time. After the second one I was really gassed. That last 400m was really tough. I had to walk the first bit of the 800m recovery jog and told myself that I only had one more interval to go. I knew it would hurt, but at least then I'd be done. Rain had started falling by this time, but it wasn't heavy enough to matter. In fact I'd wished for it to just open up and cool me off, but to no avail. As I started into the last interval I knew it would be a battle to the end, but was determined to get'er done. Here are the surprising results:

1. 6:19 (3:57/km)
2. 6:22 (3:58/km)
3. 6:20 (for some reason this shows up as 3:56/km on the Garmin data)

Not bad. (Though thinking back to my 5k race back in May that 4:15/km pace is only one second faster than race pace, so perhaps I was just a little too pessimistic in my predictions.) The entire 10km took me 52:54 for an average pace of 5:17/km (8:31/mile). Next up is a long easy run on Friday and then the Toronto 10 Miler race on Sunday morning. Wouldn't it be nice for another surprise to happen then?

Garmin don't lie.