now . . . what am i forgetting?

13.6 miles . . .

warm up

5 X 6 minutes at tempo (5:32) with 1 minute rest

6 X strides with full recovery

cool down

there was a girl on the track today, walking around and around, talking on the phone while i was doing my tempo repeats. after about the third one, she hung up only to plug her ears with music. i thought that she was really missing out on this morning by turning it off. so many sounds.

the wind rushing towards the ears

the rhythmic pounding of shoe on track

the cry of the birds

the track was epic this morning. i thin mist hovering around the backside. you can feel it when you breathe, so breathe deep. one crow made me jump, upsetting my cadence during a tempo. i heard his wings flapping in my ear. i turned my head, he was flying inches from my face.

what was not epic, what caused some frustration, but only for a moment, and then it turned into a laugh. a laugh at morning rocky's unending stupidity. it happened right after my warm up. i open up the car door to grab my racing flats. they're not on the seat. they're not on the floor. oh wait, they are on the floor, at home, in the kitchen, where i forgot them. my only other shoes i have with me are my trail running shoes. for trail shoes they are light but much heavier than what i typically wear for speed work. and then i had this thought. if i can cruise through this workout with these shoes, i can do anything.

the first two repeats were relatively easy. but the problem is in the 1 minute cool down. what good is that? by the fourth and fifth repeat my breathing was still quite heavy. but i liked this challenge. i like running at tempo. i like that feeling of a constant medium hard push.

i ended up going longer than 6 minutes because at perfect pace i could run my mile at 5:32 and then that last 200m at 41:50 which puts me at 6:13:50. and what is 13.5 seconds anyway? something in the compulsive nature of my personality is appeased with ending at a 200m marker. the first one was over at 6:14:19, not because i couldn't keep pace, but because my watch doesn't show hundredths of seconds. so when i go around a lap and hit the reset and it reads 1:23, it could mean 1:23:01 or 1:23:99 or somewhere in between. all my other ones were under my goal time with each one getting progressively faster with the last one at 6:11:50.

the strides where tough. i'm not sure if it was because i was tired or because those trail shoes where hard to sprint in or both. last night wasn't the most restful of times. watched law and order when i should have gone to bed. then gracie woke up at around 4:00. i plugged her with the binky and went back to bed. she woke up about 40 minutes later. this happened three or four times before my wife just fed her. during that time of broken sleep, i had the most vivid, intense dreams but i can't remember even a piece of any of them.