A moment of Truth...

Last week I decided not to do my running speed work session. Instead I did a moderate run. The reason was I wanted to give my hamstring some time to heal. It was still sore from racing the half marathon a couple weeks ago. It turns out that it was a good decision.

Today I went to the track and I wasn't sure what to expect. My heel was sore, but the strange thing is that the discomfort is when I walk. When I run or bike it seems to go away and when I'm wearing shoes there is less discomfort. The pain is not coming from the muscle or tendon but the bone area. I'm almost thinking it may be a stress fracture. Either way it's not yet preventing me from training, which is a good thing.

The warm up at the track was okay and the 4 x 100 speed sprints started to loosen the heel up. Then I got into the main workout, which was 3 x 1600 meter intervals. My focus was to go as fast as I could and maintain form. Whenever I do speed work I try to pretend that I'm in a 5 km race and run through the pain. 

The first set I did at 6:24 (5:57 pace), the second was 6:22 (5:57 pace) and the third was 6:18 (5:52 pace), with just over a 3 minutes light jog in between sets. My fastest 100 was at a 4:47 pace. I was really happy with the 1600's average pace, it was my fastest ever, and if I was doing a 5 km race and could have maintained that pace, I would have finished in 18:26. If I ever did that time or even broke 19 minutes, I'd be ecstatic. I was also happy with the fact that each 1600 was faster than the previous.

The important part was that I didn't get injured and it looks like my hamstring is healed. I was also pretty happy with my times considering I did just under 5 hours of training yesterday and was really tired this morning.

The one strength I have found I have, which I'm finding is not common, is that I can race at a similar pace to my training paces over long distances. The longer the race and the more pain involved, the better I'd do. I guess that is why I like Half Ironmans and Full Ironmans.

I forgot to mention a funny story from this past weekend. The bar we went to on Friday night had a live band and lots of cougar women were on the dance floor and extremely drunk. In fact, everyone in the bar was extremely drunk. Anyways, one of the cougars, in her late 40's, asked my son Reid who is 12, to dance. She was all over him on the dance floor. It was not like an older women dancing with a child at a wedding. She was dirty dancing with him like she wanted to take him home. He kept looking at us for help and I kept laughing and giving him the "thumbs up". When the song ended he was able to slip away.

Speed Run - 59:14 / 7.76 miles / 7:38 pace / 136 avg HR