Double the Workout, Double the Fun

Early AM: 3 mile w/u
Goal: 8x800 @2:45 w/250m recovery
Actual: 2:36, 2:36, 2:36, 2:38, 2:38, 2:37, 400 in 73.5
1.5 mile c/d
Total: 9 miles

Later AM: 1 mile w/u
Drills, 5x30m "high knees" uphill
5x2:30 hill circuit
~3-4 miles

If you ever want to make the morning feel like an entire day, try cramming in two workouts and no meals into the span of four hours. That just about sums up my Tuesday.

To be fair, I brought it upon myself. I'd already planned to do 800s with Caitlin this morning when I agreed to help out at a middle school cross-country camp. I guess I just didn't realize how closely in time these two events would occur or how drained I'd be after the first workout. In the end, however, both sessions ended up being a lot of fun and made me appreciate my breakfast/lunch all that much more.

For starters, let's discuss the 800m workout. Caitlin, Justin and I planned to do this on a loop in Dilworth that is apparently widely used for this sort of thing, so much so that it actually has markers spray painted on the ground every 200 meters. When we rolled up to the Dowd at 6am we found that Alice Rogers, Pete Brown and Lat Purser were planning to do a similar workout. This was a pleasant surprise and an opportunity to team up with a few new people for what promised to be a difficult session. Caitlin had prescribed a 2:45 clip for these, but it became pretty obvious during the first 200 meters of the first interval that we would not be running that slowly (mostly because Caitlin and I were sprinting after Lat, who proceeded to demolish us throughout the workout despite not wearing a watch or being remotely aware of his pace). Ultimately we ended up rewarding ourselves for the faster tempo by cutting the workout a bit short, which panned out just as well for me since I'd promised to be at McAlpine by 8:30 to assist with the camp. (Also, here's a special shout out to Rebecca Thomason for mixing Gatorade for me and Caitlin on her porch pre-cooldown despite the fact that we were practically watering her plants with our sweat.)

Driving out to McAlpine I was already tired and hungry but also excited at the prospect of running with the kids at the camp. I knew little about the setup beyond the fact that most of them were future cross-country runners at Holy Trinity Middle School. Turns out there were 10 of them evenly mixed between genders and grades, all possessing an enthusiasm and boundless energy that I would love to bottle up. After a warmup mile and some drills we did a few high-knees exercises up the hill before dividing up into groups of two for a series of hill repeat loops. I ran with a tall eighth grader named Darvy and a small (but oh so spunky) sixth grader named Tyler, both of whom were determined to "beat" all the other groups on the hills despite the fact that we weren't really being timed. They made sure to do one more repeat than everyone else for good measure as well. It was a lot of fun to see them pushing themselves so intently and soaking up the training advice like a sponge.

Needless to say, by the time I returned home just after 11 I was starving and exhausted. Fortunately I had the rest of the day off work to rest and recover and squeeze in a badly needed nap. This may not have been the most conventional of workout days, but it was definitely time well spent.