I missed my track workout on Tuesday because I had to fly to Southern California. Jeff, the Amazing Hip and I made contact and he offered to take me out for a track run with himself and his lovely wife SMSMH but alas, I had no time since it was a one day deal. Next time, though!

I did what the FIRST program says and didn’t sweat it. Yesterday I decided would be the day to get in 7 x 800 with 400 recovery. I got up, got dressed and the bargaining began.
“Maybe I’ll just do 5 because I have to run 15 miles this weekend and I don’t want my legs to be tired”
“The program says 7”
“I know but well… we’ll see”

I got to the track, set my Garmin for intervals of 1/2 mile run, 1/4 mile recovery and and hit start, immediately realizing that I should have done a warm up first. Oh well – I took the first 1/2 mile easy. On the 2nd interval the bargaining was getting really strident

“Man, I really am NOT feeling it! I’ll TRY to go for 5 but I don’t know”
“The plan calls for 7 – you need to to 7”
“I know but… my legs… I’m tired… you know I haven’t really been doing my track work”
“You need to do 7”
“Okay fine, I’ll get to 4 and think about it”
“Don’t forget to do some in the other direction”
“check”

But if I’ve learned nothing else about myself during training I’ve learned that if I just keep going I can do what I set out to do. On a remote corner of my brain I was thinking “If you just get through 4 you’ll be more than 1/2 way done” and with that in mind I carried on.

After 4 I turned and started going the other way.
After 5 I thought “One more – you can do it”
After 6 I thought “you only have 1 more so what’s that? 5 or 6 minutes. Keep going”
After 7 I was really happy. My Garmin played a happy little tune and said “Finished!”

And thusly, one bargained interval at a time I did all of my repeats. Today I was going to get in my 15 miles because I have a friend coming in from out of town tomorrow but I didn’t have time so I will either do them tonight, or early tomorrow or late Sunday. I’m not worrying about it anymore because I’m starting my taper and I will get it done and I am almost to my marathon. And that’s a good thing.

Interval Splits (in min/mile):
9:14, 8:06, 8:29, 8:50, 8:27, 8:14, 8:29
not bad.