After Christmas shopping with Mom

After Christmas shopping with Mom is one of my favorite things to do while I’m home. Today we hit the mall (which, for the record, is totally different than it was 10 years ago when I worked there; I can’t even find half the stores anymore, and there’s a zillion new and expensive shops in their place). I came away with the two items I was hoping for — a new purse, which I found at Belk’s, and black casual shoes, which I found at Clark’s. This was after being basically laughed at by the shoe salesman at Belk’s when I dared to ask if they had a certain pair in a size 11. Damn department stores and their prejudice against bigfoots like me!

This morning I did the speedwork that I was supposed to do yesterday — 4×800 at 4:20 with 400 recovery. Believe it or not, today was the first time I’ve ever run on an actual track — today’s track being the one at A.G. Middle School here in Charlotte. Now, never having run on a track before, I assumed that the innermost lane was the one that was 400 meters, and that all the outer lanes were progressively more. It wasn’t until my cooldown (at which point I suspected that the inner lap may have been slightly short, due to my times) that I finally took a closer look at all the different markings on the track and finally decided that on this particular track, lane two is 400 meters. Which means my lane was a bit short.

So, let’s call the workout 4×790 meters, with 395 recovery.

My “warmup” mile clocked in at 10:41. I really didn’t think I’d done it quite that fast, which was the beginning of my suspicions about the track. Anyway, I began my repeats and immediately felt like crap. I’ve been battling some sniffles ever since I got home (probably just the change in weather), and felt like I couldn’t get a good breathing rhythm going. My legs felt heavy too. And every time I passed the far end of the track, a cold breeze blew in my face. I just was not feeling it.

However, somehow the workout came together in the end. I can’t say I ever felt warmed up or particularly comfortable, but I got it done. I walked all the recovery 400s just to give myself a mental break. Splits were:

4:04, 4:14 (800 running, 400 walking)
4:10, 4:20
4:14, 4:19
4:14, 4:20

Interesting to note that at that repeat speed, I was running exactly twice as fast as my “brisk walk” pace. Cooldown mile was 11:07.

So I felt like poo, yet pulled off the workout just as called for. Hmm. I can only chalk that up to the weather, which was ideal — very sunny, in the upper 40s.