Easing back into it

You can only take so many days off after a marathon. The soreness everywhere below the waist (well, almost everywhere) had gone away in less than a week after the 2009 San Francisco Marathon (shamless SEO alert!), and as of Monday (eight days) I only had a tiny bit of tightness in my Achilleses-es.

I had to start training again -- if you can call it that -- sometime, and today was that day. Actutally, yesterday was that day, but, as a highly adaptive individual, I revised my plan based on new and timely information. (On the surface, this might share some characteristics with procrastination, but the trained eye can make the distinction fairly easily.)

So anywho, Wednesday started out much like Tuesday, with me weighed down by weariness (as opposed to wariness). Again adapting, I decided my intervals would have to wait until after the doctor's appointment I had scheduled. On the other hand, the high school track is literally across the street from my doctor's office, so there was no escaping this one.

This was my third time ever of running intervals. The first, I did 800s, three or four, between 3:30 and 4:00 each. The second occasion, which was about two weeks before San Francisco, I ran three 1,600s -- at 6:52, 7:15 and a very unpleasant 8:00. This time, I was looking for four 1,600-meter intervals, ideally all under 7:30.

I got two. Not just two at the speed I wanted. Two intervals. Then I quit, just like a quitting quitter quitting quittily.

It was approaching 90 degrees when I got on the track, but I was confident enough. I jogged a very slow 600 meters to warm up, then hit the ground running (ah, so clever). Halfway through the second lap, my lungs were getting a workout and the legs were fine. I kept going and clocked 6:56. Good start. After one rest lap, it was time for interval #2. Not even halfway through this one, I got the ol' back-of-the-diaphragm pain. But I still managed a 7:30. Then I walked my rest lap. It didn't help. About a 150 meters into interval #3, my whole body told me to stop, and I listened. Just another training failure. I guess I'm picking up my training where I left off.

Was it dehydration? The fatigue I've been feeling all week? A lack of caffeine? Excuses, all of them, but just you try to take them away from me!

Seriously, I've got to get better at intervals. As I'll write more about another day, speed is going to be my major focus before my next marathon. I can be a baby about it for a little wihle, but soon I'll have to grow up and be a man.

Gaa gah goo goo!

Coming soon: My training for San Francisco, also a race report