Pacer

Today the stars aligned and Dave and I were able to go to the track together --without any children-- for the first time in...maybe more than five years. The stars aligned even more for me because he raced yesterday and, therefore, was willing to do my workout instead of running his paces, quite a bit faster.

So we ran over there and set out to do 3 x 1 mile repeats. He said he would go my pace, but it was painfully obvious after a 400 that I was having trouble finding my pace. I was too fast, too fast.

At my request, he pulled in ahead of me and slowed us down. As I felt the pace, it occurred to me that although I have been loving my 800 repeat days at the track, whenever I have longer intervals, it has been somewhere on the spectrum of wildly uncomfortable (rather than the pleasantly uncomfortable that a hard track workout can be) to complete disaster.

I have been going out too fast. Just like I did today Like I am doing another 800 instead of a mile or longer. But without someone to check me and help me correct, I have just been like, Ok, I'm holding this pace now - let's see if I can keep it up.

That's not very smart. And I never put it together? That's really not very smart.

Whereas today, the first repeat felt easy, too easy. The second felt like a little bit of work, and the third was a bit more and then we opened it up a bit in the last 800, and that was quite a bit of work. I tried not to just tuck in behind him and let him block the wind, but I did go ahead and just trust him on the paces and let myself not think about that so much.

I don't think my pacer will be able to be with me every week, as he meets his running partners early morning and goes then, but hopefully I will carry the lesson along with me. At least for about 6 more weeks until my next race.