Two weeks ago at our weekly track workout with the Jim Spivey Running Club (JSRC), it was 102º at the start with full sun. Last week it was 72º with overcast skies and some rain. Tonight the roller-coaster continued with temps around 94º and a heat index of a whopping 106º with the nasty humidity.
Tonight it felt like running inside a bowl of very warm soup, and honestly the conditions were more difficult than when the temps were at 102º a couple of weeks ago. All of this led us only having 5-people at the track tonight and me taking a very conservative approach to the workout. Here’s a rundown…
- 2-mile warmup
- 6 x 100m stride outs
- 800m straights and curves (400m recovery)
- 4 x 250m gfgf (150m recovery / 400m recovery)
- 3 x 500m f (200m recovery / 400m recovery)
- 800m straights and curves
- ~.75-mile cool down.
I generally felt pretty good through the intervals tonight, though the humidity did start to get to me during the 500m repeats. It was also about this time that John started pulling people out of the workout due to the conditions. However, because of my fairly conservative pacing, I was able to finish the entire workout with my legs still feeling fairly good.
Sometimes when I overdo it during a workout, I feel so trashed at the end that my cool down is more like a shuffle. Well, I’m pleased that tonight this was not the way I felt. I only needed around .75-miles for the cool down to finish off 7-miles total for the night, but my legs felt fresh enough to run quite a bit farther.
It was nice again tonight to have Nick with us at the track, which gave me someone to run with for at least half the workout. We stayed together through the 250s, but he had a gear at the end that I just didn’t want to try tonight.
At the end I spent some time talking to John about the night, and also about my training in general. So far I’ve been really pleased with the schedule he has put together for me, and also with how my body has been responding. I’m really excited about my training, and already looking forwarding to racing season this fall.
Beast Mode…ON!