Story
With the challenge drawing towards a close and 3 courses left, it was time to finally bite the bullet and put in a hard “metric mile.” I’ve been doing my best to put in summer mileage in preparation for XC, but I haven’t been doing much speed work. I therefore wasn’t expecting much, and I was deeply dreading the aerobic distress typically associated with the 2nd half of such an effort.
I was at work up at Syracuse University, and the track is 2.4 miles on the “south side” of campus, so I warmed up to the track with my friend and off/on training partner Sascha Scott. Sascha was there in part for moral support and cheering, but she volunteered to do some 100-200m strides timed with my laps, crossing the diagonals to be at the far side of the track each time I passed the 200m mark.
After some strides and a few form drills, I toed the line, and said “Well let’s get this over with…”
Sascha was with me the first 200, and I came through a little hot in 37-38 seconds, but was settling in. I came through 400m in 77 feeling good, and with spring in my step. The second 400m was pretty similar, 77s, and 2:34 at the 800m mark, but in the last 100m of that lap, the little demons of oxygen deficiency were starting to wake up.
Coming through that lap marker, the voice in my head was saying that there was no way I was going to be able to keep this up, but at the same time, there was the fatalism of “You are here, and you are running, so you better just make the best of it.”
It of course helps when your friend is there, is going to be pushing you when you reach that 200m mark again, and you have an ego to maintain…
So that third lap went by, and it was in fact a little slower (79), and things did feel very uncomfortable indeed. But then there’s only 400m to go, and it’s just a matter of dissociation: “I am the puppeteer controlling the legs of the very unfortunate man on this track.” This worked okay until the last 100m, at which point it was most definitely my lungs that were yelling for more oxygen. Happily I had Sascha pulling me through the second half of that 75 second last lap, and the finish line eventually reached me.
Quite happy with a 5:07.7 given my training lately, and glad to remind myself about that feeling of discomfort, and how to properly manage it. Perhaps most happily, I am confident that it will still be some time (but perhaps not very much) before my son, Riley, effectively laps his old man in a mile race.
I stumbled back to the office with a 2.4 mile cooldown (with some stops to massage out some calf cramps) and was ready in the evening for a strength session.
Now that I’ve done the shortest course, I plan on doing the other book-end, the Dryden Lake Lollipop this weekend with an altogether different form of discomfort! Whee!
