Rainy Nights and the Return of Speed Work

Yesterday was supposed to be a rest day, as Mondays usually are, however I have a race coming up this Saturday so I decided to exchange my Monday rest day for a Friday rest day. I was expecting the weather to be a little cooler than the weekend, but it ended up being better than expected: around 75 degrees and rainy! I haven’t run in the rain since April. Back then 75 degrees seemed hot, hot, hot! Now it sounds oh so delicious.

After my delightful rainy run

As I said, I have a race this Saturday: a 5 Miler on Forbidden Drive in Fairmount Park. Not only is it my first trail race, but its the first time I will be completing a race of a similar distance for the second time (does that make sense?). What I mean is that I ran an 8k in April (4.97 miles) so this is my opportunity to beat my previous record (+0.03 miles, but basically the same distance) and set a new PR (personal record). I’m nervous for this race because of this fact. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and even though this isn’t the big one (aka the Philly Marathon in November), its still important that I do well. I’m all the more nervous because not only have a run this distance before, but I exceeded my original time goals during the 8k, meaning it will be even harder to beat.

So, that said, I’m firmly re-instituting speed work this week! In late April I started adding 2 mornings of speed work, 2 miles each day. Honestly though, I’d much rather force myself to go farther than faster. Quite frankly running fast sucks. It hurts. A lot. But no other type of run I’ve done has been as rewarding as speed work. Maybe its because I can see the progress so clearly. I was literally shaving seconds off of my times every week. And when you are only running 1 mile at a time, seconds count. Now, after weeks of sleeping through my speed workouts, and weeks of being slow and sluggish, I need to suck it up, get up, and get the eff out there! I don’t know if my two speed workouts this week will do enough to make my times that much faster on Saturday, but it can’t hurt. Though my training plan calls for 3 miles of speed work twice a week, I’m going to start again with 2 miles instead. When I increased from 2 to 3 miles back in June I had a hard time adjusting. Just adding one more mile to speed work was challenging, and my miles were much slower than previously simply because I knew I needed energy for the third mile. And since it’s been a few weeks, I know I’ll get a lot more out of 2 miles than 3.

This morning I ran my 2 miles. It was terrible. It made me hate running. But, after less than 15 minutes of run time I was done and had not done nearly as bad as I’d thought I would considering I’ve skipped a few weeks. And, I actually woke up early, which is a miracle! Not a bad way to start the day!