Running Track

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This was my run today.

And before you wave it off as incredibly boring, let me show it to you one other way:

Not half bad, right?

I love the track. It’s soft and rubbery, so I can wear old running shoes (because I’m cheap and want to squeeze every last mile out of them). It goes round and round and round, and that repetitiveness just lets me space out completely and listen to my music as I go faster, then slower, then faster again.

Running on the track, I feel and imagine myself looking like this:

European champion at 100m, Ivet Lalova. Fellow Bulgarian. Damn, girl, do you have *any* fat at all? Any? Photo credit

I said, I imagine – OK?

I’ve never had any formal track training in high school or in college. In New York City, I survived a summer of what we endearingly called Toby’s Track of Pain, led by the amazing Toby Tanser. Those workouts were brutal. Honestly, training with a bunch of people who eat six-minute miles for breakfast is no help to the self-confidence. But the beer afterwards was divine. And it did make me faster. The runs, not the beer. Well, maybe the beer too, a little bit. It’s good recovery food, isn’t it?

The problem with running with a coach was I didn’t really pay attention to what I was doing. Just start at the whistle, stop at the whistle. I could never go to the track and replicate Toby’s workouts, all by my own lonesome.

So when I started the Half Marathon: Own It training plan from Train Like a Mother and I headed to the track for my first speed work session, I felt I was in heaven.

Well, I felt like crap. But when I was done – I was in heaven.

I’ve been to the track once a week every week since, with a roughly one-month break (my last workout was the week before the Giant Race half on Sept 16).

The best part is, RunKeeper — which I’ve been religiously using to track my runs for two and a half years now — recently released a “Workout” feature, where you can basically pre-set any type of workout you like. Time intervals, distance intervals, fast, slow, yada yada yada. It’s awesome, try it.

In fact, my only complaint is, what in the world took you so long, RunKeeper? For real, have you tried running as fast as you can for two minutes, while holding your phone and looking at it constantly; or worse – shoving it in the in-between-boobs pocket of your bra? So annoying.

Next week is another half-marathon – Marsh Madness on Saturday (I thought it was a play on words and took place in March, but no – you just run by a marsh) – so I’ll skip the track and rest up. But I’ll be back soon enough!

Until then:

Today’s run:

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