Track Workout

Wednesday night I did something I just never do. I went to the track. Drove over to the local college campus and met my running buddy.

I was actually trying to think of when the last time I had been on a track really was. I think back in 97, I had a gym class in college where I walked on the track one time. Hehe. Before that, the last time was probably in high school gym class.

Needless to say, it has been a while.

My running buddy expressed her distaste for running lap after lap after lap, so we agreed that we would do 2 laps, and then run up and down the stairs in the bleachers. Up one section, down the next, across the bleachers. There's probably 6 aisles, so that's 3 complete stair climber trips.

Our first two laps we averaged a decent clip, around an 8:20/mile. After that, I don't know where we wound up, because the pace on my Garmin was getting all messed up due to our slow movement in terms of GPS feet while on the stairs.

We wound up doing 3 sets of that.. Afterwards, we decided to run on the track for a final pair of laps. The first was the pace that we could sustain (it certainly was slower than 8:20, though). The second was to be faster... about halfway around she told me to just go, and I sprinted out the rest.

The next day, my legs were sore, but a good sore. A solid workout sore.


I'm glad we went.. we'll have to go more often, just to mix up the running a bit.

It's put me in a quandary, though. This Sunday is a local 5K race. I was debating running it. The issues I see are these:
- I did a hard workout this week, and I just came close to having IT band issues the other week. Should I push it?
- I wanted to go on a long run, maybe 8-10 miles on Saturday. Doing that would nix the race for sure.
- It's a 10am race, with a 9am registration. I know, to most everyone on Earth, that time is like "so?". I don't run very well when waking up. On Sundays, I might get up around 9:30. It's just a bit early for my tastes.


I've never run in a 5K. So, I wonder if I should. Or, I could just pass on this one and figure there will be another one in the future. Decisions, decisions. I'll have to see how Saturday goes, and how itching I am to go out and do my long run.