Yesterday the Universe conspired against me to ruin my plans, but it turned out that my plans were actually improved by the ruining.
After work I set out as quickly as possible to run to the track. I planned to use the ten minutes it takes to run there as my warmup and then start on some speedwork. I had my schedule all planned out so that Jack could meet me at exactly 5:15 and I could shower at the IM and make it to martial arts class with time to spare.
A block from the track, I saw something dart through the trees. “Oh, no,” I said, because I knew what it was: people on the track. As I got closer I saw that it was some kind of MSU sports team out for pratice—either lacrosse or soccer. I know, I know, those two things look totally different, but I couldn’t tell due to the numerous pieces of equipment they had. I still held out hope until I got to the track entrance and saw a giant sign that said “CLOSED FOR MSU ATHLETICS.” Denied.
I could have changed my workout plans and gone for a thirty-minute run around campus, but by then I was fully aware of how hot it was, and the sun was beating down, and I was feeling a little bitter about the sports team. Instead I ran over to Jack’s office and waited for him to get out of work.
We made a mad dash back to the apartment to get a second set of clothes. I took a shower in record time (under three minutes), but we were still late in leaving for martial arts. When I leave that late I never make it to class on time, but somehow Jack dropped me off with four extra minutes. It wasn’t the best class I’ve ever had, but I did get to do some boxing.
Once class was done some clouds had rolled over East Lansing and the temperature was cooler. We headed back to the track. Through the bleachers I could see people jogging around the lanes, but they were decidedly not MSU student athletes. We did a quick warm-up and I pointed out the one annoying lady at the track. She was walking around the inside lane. The #1 rule of track etiquette is that if you’re going to walk or jog really slowly, you should do it in the outside lanes (unless, of course, you’re alone). This allows people who are going to run fast and sprint to work out without having to recalculate for the staggered start lines at each interval. I used my irritation to fuel my first 200m.
I realized after my 200m and 400m (separated by a 200m recovery) that my workout was almost ridiculously ambitious. I’d chosen to do a ladder workout: 200m, 400m, 800, 1200, 800, 400m, and 200m separated by 200m recoveries. When I chose it, I forgot that I am not a sprinter and that speedwork is hard. I was wiped halfway through the 800m, and I spent half a lap thinking about ways to justify quitting right then and there.
But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being a quitter. I did not want to do the 1200. My legs hurt and the sprinting really did a number on my lungs. I changed my Garmin to show me my speed in MPH, and by the end of the 800m I was struggling to keep my speed at 9 mph.
I started the 1200 a little too slow. About 100 meters in I realized that I was slipping back into my distance-running habits by allowing my legs to turn over slowly to try and conserve energy. I wanted to slow down so badly, but instead—and this was my great victory of the night—I forced myself to have a quick turnover. It’s kind of crazy how different I feel when I’m consciously trying to sprint. I’m on my toes, I have a decent forward lean, and I can even maintain an okay turnover speed.
I really, really wanted to be done after the 1200 but I figured that if King Leonidas fought to the death at Thermopylae with 300 guys then I could at least finish 3.5 more laps of sprinting. I really focused on my turnover and I was delighted to see my speed maintained at 9 mph, then 9.4 mph. Finally, during my last 200m, I got my speed to 10 mph. WOO!
After having done two speed workouts now, I have come to the conclusion that those things are brutal. Twenty-six minutes of speed was harder for me than most of my long runs. But at the end of the day, I want to know that I tried everything to be faster in that next 5k, even if it’s my least favorite kind of workout. It took me three years in high school to realize that in fact I did not care for Track & Field at all, and it’s taken me almost five years to come to a grudging agreement with myself: I will do speedwork on the track as long as I don’t have to spend hours there competing in events I don’t even enjoy. I drive a hard bargain. But I continue to learn new things: how to force quickness during a 1200, how it feels to maintain a decent turnover when I don’t want to, how to sprint. I might loathe speedwork and I might not be any good at it right now but I can already see some improvement.
As we walked away from the track, a girl who had been doing some 200m repeats with her Dad was complaining about how much she disliked the track. “I’d rather run 10 miles [the way she said it was similar to the way I sometimes say that I'd rather run fifty miles than do something else] than do those sprints.” And I thought, “Me too.” But someday, grasshopper, you’ll either quit running forever or decide that you’d rather suffer a little on the track than finish a race thinking What if I’d done some speedwork?
And so the search for a new track workout begins again!
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