Notes
Interesting workout today. Calf cramps came back again however I managed to deal with them during the workout with Sportlegs & pickle juice. Really came on strong after I finished running. Must be a protein deficiency again. Pisses me off. Workout went well though. Showed up at the Nike campus ahead of Helen so I could get in a solid effort before she arrived to do her mile repeats on the track (She's doing a Special Block today and had already run a solid 15 miles on Sauvie Island earlier in the day). Warmed up with 2 miles around the bark chip trail and then got right into my 2 mile tempo. Felt strong on this and it was interesting to run fast on this bark chip trail. I don't believe I've ever tried to run hard on this trail before. It was tough because of the undulating hills that it features which is exactly what I wanted to increase the difficulty of this tempo. Toward the end it really starting getting tough but it was a lot of fun. Great weather today made it even better. Felt like 59 degrees and sunny the whole time. Not typical early march weather here. After the 2 mile, I met Helen at the trailhead entrance and we ran another 2.4 mile easy for her warmup. Got to the track and started her mile repeats. She was originally suppose to do 4-5 repeats but was completely gassed after two so I called the workout. After she dropped out, I pressed on and decided to run another 3 repeats, this time at 'my' hard pace. First one felt great and actually had to slow myself down the last 50m. Hit it in 5:10. Second one ran in 5:09. Third one was the toughest because I decided to go 98% effort. Split 5:01 and was very happy with the result. Don't remember the last time I did mile repeats that fast. I was surprised I was able to run so well despite taking 5.5 days off because of my knee cut from last sunday. Usually when you take more than 3 days off at a time it throws the body's rythym off and poor performance results. Did a 1 mile cooldown back to the car and when I stopped running thats when my calves started getting that old feeling again (cramping). Hung out at the car with Helen for 15 minutes stretching and drinking my recovery shake until I felt I could safely drive again. Cramping began to dissipate so I drove to work with no further issues. Overall great day for a run (weather wise) and I am VERY happy with how this workout turned out. It sucks that I missed all those days this week and didn't get to run much but atleast I can say that I finished off this week on a high note at the very end. Hopefully I can get these stitches out of my knee tomorrow and also get my cramping under control so I can resume full scale training. The racing season is almost upon us so I need to get my shit together.