First Track Workout - Wednesday 5/11/10 - 5.81 miles 01:09:11

Sundays are long, lovely runs in the park.  Wednesday evenings are miserable, repetitive runs around a local track.  I hate running after work to begin with, I always feel tired and heavy and sluggish and I'm consistently slower than in the mornings.  Wednesdays I bring a bag full of running gear to the office and change here, I don't have time to get out of work and get home to change before heading to the track.  It's a long, long day.

The program calls for speed work at the track and that's what I'd been most nervous about.  Then they sent the schedule showing that speed work wouldn't begin until July and I relaxed a bit.  Then I saw last year's speed work log showing that it really wasn't that speedy, 15-30 seconds faster than marathon pace, and relaxed even more.  Still I wasn't really sure what to expect from the first track session.

We started with a warm-up lap around the local community college campus.  "Warm-up" is kind of a misleading term since they took us as one big group.  I figure a warm-up lap should be nice and slow but it was on the speedy side for me.  I'm sure it was really slow for those in the 9 minute pace group, just right for those in the middle and way too fast for those in the last groups.  We finished 1.3 miles in 14 minutes, just under an 11 minute pace.  Doesn't sound too bad but when it's your first mile and you've got four more to go it can really have a negative impact on the rest of the run.  After the warm-up we ran in circles for 3 miles, I can think of few things more boring than running 12 laps around a track.  My friend and coworker was suffering some shin splints and dropped back so I made a few new friends in a dentist, a professor, one of our pace coaches who's run 19 marathons and a guy who had a heart valve replaced in September.  After we got nice and dizzy we did one cool-down lap around campus before calling it a night.  Apparently a lot of group members head to a local restaurant for cheap pizza and beer, I just can't imagine hanging out any longer after an already exhausting day.  Maybe one day.