Random. I happened to look

Random.
I happened to look at my photoblog site stats this morning (which I hardly ever do) and saw that I’d gotten a few hits from a message board. I went there to check it out (use login name “Veller”, password “Hello”, thanks Bugmenot!) and it turns out that it’s a message board string about a hand sign someone is calling “The Annie” that is actually the Hook ’em Horns sign. And because of that, some girl apparently hotlinked to this photo on my photoblog.
Random. I think this is the first time I’ve seen a photo of mine show up in a completely unexpected place.
Anyway. I’ve thrown myself a bit off my half marathon training schedule in the past couple weeks, partly because of laziness (like not going for my long run on Sunday and putting it off until Monday) and partly because of work (I’ll be here until 9:00 tonight for a sim, so no running for me tonight).
I’m hoping to make my “departure” from the schedule as non-impact as possible by sticking to the important runs. After bailing on Sunday, I already mentioned how I did my long run on Monday. Well, that meant that I wasn’t in much of a mood, or rather, my legs weren’t in much of a mood, to do my scheduled 3.5 miles yesterday. So I skipped it.
I promised to get back on track today with my speed session, knowing already that I won’t be able to run tomorrow night because of work. Then: torrential rains all afternoon yesterday. Scary stuff. Lightning, flash flooding on the roads, tornado watches, etc. Not a good day to run outside.
SO I did my speedwork on the dreadmill. I mean, treadmill. And it actually went ok. For some reason I find that I have to slow down a bit when I run on the ‘mill, so I decided to make my intervals time-based instead of distance-based. After a 1-mile (12:00 pace) warmup, I did 45 minutes of intervals. Nine sets of 5 minutes each, where I ran the first two minutes at 6.7 mph (a hair under 9:00 pace) and the next 3 minutes at 4.5 mph (13:20 pace) to recover. Overall I think the strategy did a decent job of approximating the ~2:10/3:20 400m run/jog repeats I did the last time. I finished with an abbreviated 2/3 mile cooldown (12:00 pace again).
Overall I covered less distance, but the 8:57 pace is slower than I’d have been doing on the trail outside. The treadmill just slows me down somehow. Who knows. Anyway, total distance covered was 5.68 miles, so after taking out the 1.68 of warmup and cooldown, my intervals covered 4 miles total. If I’d done the true 9×400 repeats outside it’d have been 4.5 miles. So, not too far off. I was happy with the workout.
I’ll run a few miles on Saturday and then try for 10 on Sunday and hopefully I’ll be back on schedule! I have to say — having a schedule (as well as knowing the running bloggers are keeping tabs on me) has been really helpful on the motivation front…