Time to Read: ~3 minScott left for a business trip to NYC early Monday morning. Our Honda Pilot has a flat tire so I drove him to the bus stop and then headed back home to work. As we headed for him to board the Cornell bus he asked if I planned to go to MITHACAL Milers. "I'm not sure," I said. But I was thinking it was probably the most efficient way to get mileage in and would be a much more fun evening than just running steady state solo or trying to do the intervals on cold, wet roads. I decided I would go.
The workout
Ever since the one week I was too afraid to look at our workout, I've braved opening my email. It really is easier to know what is coming than to be in the dark. This week's workout sounded tough. It included a 1200 at I pace. However it started at the max distance and went down. I typically do really well with this type of workout.
It's a small one
Our 7 minute mile crew is normally a large crew. I arrived just a few minutes before 7 and almost no one was there. I saw my friend Bill standing alone. "Oh no you are alone?" I said to him. I'm sure he was thrilled with my less than excited to see him welcome. "Where's Elizabeth?" He replied that she had gone to the bathroom but she was definitely running. "Whew." I headed to the bathroom too and by the time I came back we had a crew of 5. Ok this was manageable. My friend Tonya looked at us and said, "thank you for coming." I was feeling the same gratitude toward this group. I rely on them week in and week out. We push each other to make it through the workouts. It is challenging but worth the challenge.
And we're off
We agreed that for our 2 minute rest we'd kind of amble vs trying to finish a slow lap. If our fast lap pace is 59 seconds it makes sense it would take us more than 2 minutes to do a recovery lap. Then as Adam sent the pace groups off it was our turn before we knew it. We were 5 steady runners - no long tail meant no extra recovery time. We completed our 1200 about 6 seconds too fast (1 second per lap) so that was pretty good! Our first rest felt blissful and soon we were into our 1000. I found these first two intervals fun, almost easy actually. I've come to enjoy the meditative nature of this running.
Thank you to Garmin owners
Two of our crew members have Garmin watches that do a great job with splits. It lets them easily update us on how we are doing with our time. Every time Tonya yells out, "1 minute fast" I think "thank GOD she and Caroline have watches that can pace us!" My Apple watch just doesn't work for this. I still have my Tom Tom around but it stopped updating properly and basically just died. Every weekend I consider pulling it out to see if it could help and then I just cross my fingers that one of these ladies will show up to the practice. So far it has happened all but one night. That one night I was pacing and let's just say it was good that our workout was an easy one to pace!
Low mileage
Our decision to just stroll around for recovery did cut our mileage back a bit. That and the fact that it took us right up til a bit past 8 to finish the workout. I left with only 4.5 miles instead of my typical 5.5, but I was happy with the effort! It was a hard workout.
Calling Scott
As I hopped into the car I texted Scott. I meant to say, "if you are doing with karaoke call me." What it auto corrected to say was, "if you are out of Katie me call me." Yikes. Soon he called and was polite enough not to mention my crazy text. His work function was just wrapping up and I was heading home to dinner. His call was a nice break from my NPR One coronavirus update. We chatted about our respective workouts (he did his interval work Monday night in NYC) and I shared the really awesome thing I learned from my crew that evening. Apparently you only need a permit at Cornell until 5 pm and after that most lots are available without a permit. We typically park in the parking garage unless the students are on break. I was REALLY excited to learn this!!