Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Blustery Day

Given that I am Eyore{I do all the donkey work!!!}I only needed Pooh,Tigger and Piglet to show up at Lower Merion this lunch time and we could've sang"hail hail the gang's all here"!!!
Like any good runner worth his or her salt I'd paid attention to the weather,I'd known since Thursday that today would be windy,but how windy???if the extra breeze that greeted me upon opening the front door at 10.20am wasn't enough to alert me to the conditions then one of the lacrosse goals in lane 1 of the track and not the infield was!!!.

At least the snow that covered the infield and lanes 2-8 last Sunday was gone and the sun was out but sweet jaysus the feckin wind,I ditched my warm up bottoms only because looking down at them flapping in the breeze was enough to tell me there was an extra second per repeats waiting to happen!!

#1 400m 72.06.A promising start,it was my 5th repeat last Sunday b4 I notched a 72.
#2 400m 72.99.Obviously not a fluke,last weeks average of 72s was looking like falling......
#3 400m 74.82.Smuck! this is what happens when you don't focus mentally on the task at hand!
#4 400m 71.24.Much more like it!knee lift,leg turnover,total focus=faster split
#5 400m 71.43.See what happens went you pay attention to the fundamentals??!!
#6 400m 71.80.Rollin'rollin'rollin' keep them doggies rollin'.....
#7 400m 75.26.There she blows!!!Dear God the wind going into the first turn just stood me up,good job I worked the home straight to keep it below 76.
#8 400m 71.70.No wind and back to 71s,repeats are so much easier when you're not fighting the elements!
#9 400m 76.32.DOH!Just wasn't there mentally or physically on this one,need to keep that focus all the way round,it's only 1 lap!!
#10 400m 74.24.Got stood up by the wind just b4 the 200m mark and had to fight my way into the bottom turn.
#11 400m 75.09.Constantly fighting the wind going in to the top turn was taking a toll but I was almost done,going out swinging.....
#12 400m 68.94.To say I ran the shit out of my final 400m is perhaps underselling it a tad!!
Flew into the top turn and threw everything including the kitchen sink at this one,final repeats no matter what distance deserve that and I did not let myself down,back to 68s,nice!!!

All in all a good workout,I shaved a second off Sundays average of 72 in windy conditions and God willing next week not only will the wind NOT be a factor but I'll also becoming in to 14x400m repeats not off the back of a 16 miler the day b4.
65 miles for the week 2 repeats and a long run,I feel I've earned the right to blow off some stream tonite at Atlantic City's House Of Blues to Flogging Molly,who's up for blowing the froth off a couple of cold ones???

2 comments:

dinklesnaps said...

How could you do 400s in that wind?

kevin f forde said...

It wasn't easy but I just kept plugging away