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For the record, when I started doing speed work last year to train for my abortive attempt at the Shamrock Marathon, [...]]]> Wednesday night marked my return to speed work. If I am going to finish a marathon, and finish it faster than I did the last time I attempted one, speed work is, unfortunately, necessary.

For the record, when I started doing speed work last year to train for my abortive attempt at the Shamrock Marathon, I had a real love/hate relationship with it. I trained with Dave out in Ballston with a running group, complete with a coach doling out workouts like prison sentences. 1200 x 4 at 8:15 – go!

Ugh.

Speed work is hard for me. I have, over time, gotten so used to running at a comfortable pace, that when I push myself to run faster and experience all of the discomfort that goes along with making greater demands on my body, it almost feels… wrong. In training for the Dublin Marathon and subsequent races, I discovered I really do enjoy endurance training. Running for long periods of time at a conversational pace feels good. But oh man, I do not love running in a repetitive loop so fast that my lungs burn and my legs begin to feel like jelly. It’s just (good) pain.

Hashing was my speed work for awhile – I was running after something and trying to keep up with faster runners, so I had something to distract me from the pain of pushing my speed. But running around a track, there’s not much else to concentrate on.

Still, this year, I’m determined to rock those track workouts as defined in my training program. They won’t be too bad – it’s all just 400 repeats with a rest between each one. That’s just one lap around the track. And I have a partner to keep me motivated, which really helps. Even better, we’re doing the workouts at Cardozo High School, instead of out in fucking Ballston, which is a motivator in and of itself, given that I can jog there in 5 minutes.

Our workout on Wednesday night was a little fast – we were supposed to be doing the repeats at 2:05 to 2:15, but we were clocking in at 1:45 to 2:00. But it didn’t hurt. It was hard, but my joints all felt fine, and I even had a ton of energy for the rest of the evening and even the next day.

Saturday I have 7 miles on my own – I’ll be in Atlanta visiting my mom. Luckily she lives right near some nice asphalt running trails, complete with mile markers, so I should be in good shape.

And so training begins…

Yesterday with the help of my boyfriend Dave, I put together my loft bed. It was important to me to have a loft bed so that my entire apartment would [...]]]> I am finally 100% moved into my new place. It’s great to finally have my own place. But now the real work begins.

Yesterday with the help of my boyfriend Dave, I put together my loft bed. It was important to me to have a loft bed so that my entire apartment would not be devoted to being a bedroom. As you can see if you look at the floorplan in my previous post, it’s a tiny place – less than 300 square feet – and it’s also shaped in a tricky way. I will have to be very creative with the way I decide to arrange any remaining furniture.

Today I am going to tackle the kitchen. Right now I have more stuff than I can sufficiently tuck away in to cupboards and drawers, so I found the IKEA solution to my problem. You can’t buy everything that I got online, but you can see in the picture what I will be setting up, namely several rails, one from which I will hang pots and pans, another from which I will hang the cutlery caddy and a shelf, another which will hold a three-tiered spice rack. I also got the magnetic strip which will hold my knives, since I don’t have a knife rack. It’s all very exciting to be sure.

Two other things that need to be done are organizing my books on my new bookshelf, and doing laundry, as well as in general getting my clothes out of bags and organized where I can find something to wear in the morning (currently a challenge). I don’t currently have a dresser because I sold the one I was using at my old place. So I need to get a new one. I am considering this one, also from IKEA. I am told by my friend Nate, who owns the same dresser, that it would behoove me to use some wood glue when I assemble it, as it doesn’t hold up well over time otherwise.

My biggest challenge, though, is eventually figuring out what to do with the rest of my floor space. Should I get a loveseat or just some chairs? How should I arrange things? How open do I want to keep the floorspace? And what kind of rug should I get for the floor? I’m still working on my options…