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…