Little bit of everything

I ran 400s yesterday. I do not remember the last time I ran fastish 400s. Sometimes in late August I think.

Again, I ran in the dark so I was unable to check my 200m splits. For 8x400m with 2min jog I went 1:25, 1:26, 1:27, 1:25, 1:25, 1:25, 1:26, 1:22.

It was not super easy and it got progressively harder. I went faster than I was supposed to but I blame darkness for it. It is very tricky to hit 1:28ish for such short interval and it is very easy to slip to 1:26 or 1:30 and thus I ran by the motto “when in doubt, speed up”.

How do people run interval workouts in fall/winter? This is the first time in my life when I am unable to run during the daylight (let me tell you, life of a working person is not that great:))and thus must run in dark either before or after work. How do people run intervals because running in dark on a track where you hardly see the white line does not seem like a proper way to do it. Do people run on treadmills? Or roads? (I am not doing that!) Or just put a headlamp and go? I cannot imagine wearing a headlamp for fast intervals, that sounds dumb. 

Also, I am going back to running half of my intervals on trails. I completely forgot that I wanted to do it but PPC reminded me about it. Sigh. But it means that I have to do one hard run on weekend because I cannot run intervals on trails in dark. There are a lot of deer there (a lot!) and it is nerve wracking (for both me and them) to run in dark among them. And skunks. And squirrels. So one workout on track after work in dark, one on trails on weekend in daylight.

I ran 40min on a road on Tuesday and it was the very first time I was not obsessively checking on my ITB. I can even call it a worry-free run. It was great. But I cannot start feeling invincible now, because when I do that things go bad. With that, I am going to call PT to get an appointment for next week. 

I honestly think that having a “massage” in a hottub with jets after each interval workout might be another thing that helps me to keep ITB in check. I just sit there for 10min and let the jets massage my ITB. It is wonderful! (Then I have to get up and go swimming, which is not that wonderful. Swimming is wonderful (I love it!) but moving from nice hot water to cold pool is hard.) 

Other things are ok too. I can finally somehow lift my left leg without too much pain. Ever since I fell last weekend on that log while on mtb I was not able to lift the left leg when I was standing straight. I am able to do it when I bent forward though. But now it is better. It does not bother me when biking or running, although I feel it a little bit and I feel it when doing flip turns or when I sit and turn but nothing too bad. So that’s almost back to normal.

I am thinking about going to Louisville for NCAA XC nationals next weekend. Not that I am such a huge fan of cross-country (I am not! Esp when I have to run it) but I am very eager to see whether Jordan Hasay can finally win or I want to see some perfectly striding Kenyans. It is 3+ hour drive though so I am not convinced yet.

There are other great things I can think of sharing with you but I think that I will just talk to my sister about them since this is getting long and you probably do not care (although my sister does not care either but she is my sister so she must listen to my ramblings). My sister totally loves when I start talking about how much I love riding on a home trainer (she: “And what exactly is this home trainer?”), or when I complain that having a car is making me a puss because it was raining yesterday morning (and I got rained on on both Mon and Tue while biking from work) so I drove a car to work (she: “It is not making you a puss, it is making you smart.”). Good times.