Thursday night is usually one of the highlight’s of my running week since it is when the Jim Spivey Running Club (JSRC) has their weekly track workout. However, I expected tonight’s workout to be extremely difficult for me for two reasons:
- Since last Friday night I have been dealing with my biggest Small Fiber Sensory Neuropathy flare-up in the past two years. The peak of this was on Monday (I didn’t run at all on Mon), but I’m still dealing with it today. For those of you unfamiliar with this disorder, you can read about it in one of my initial posts on this blog entitled “Why I Run…”
- On Tuesday I started coming down with a bad cold (possibly the reason for #1 since it is an auto-immune disorder) which has been at its worst today. All day I’ve had muscle aches, chills, and even felt shaky. I was unsure whether or not I was even going to track.
Well, with those things going on I was just hoping to survive tonight and get in the miles. I ran an easy 3-mile warmup, and then we began the workout which was:
- 1000 M (400 recovery)
- 800 M (300 recovery)
- 600 M (300 recovery)
- 400 M (3 min recovery)
- 800 M (300 recovery)
- 1000 M (1.5-mile cool-down)
I ran very conservative, but still did all the intervals at faster than 1/2 marathon pace. What was amazing to me was that once the workout began I suddenly started feeling great. I’ve said for a long time that running is the best drug on earth and tonight it literally felt like a drug. Once I started felling better, there was a great deal of temptation to pick up the pace, but I just tried to stay steady and finish the workout.
When you don’t feel good, it is hard to get in the miles, and even harder to maintain confidence in yourself and your training. Tonight was a good confidence boost towards the New Orleans Marathon in the midst of what was otherwise a crummy week.