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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

s'now way

Another first for me tonight: running while snowing. It sounds like texting while driving, or some other kind of dangerous practice, but actually it was quite nice, thanks to those perfectly formed flakes that seem to only come down in December.

Tonight's practice was about increasing effort levels. That way, our coaches explained, we'd create tiny tears in our muscles, that in recovery, would reheal forming tighter, stronger bonds. Makes sense.

So instead of an easy pace where you can run and run and run and talk to your friends, you need to basically be panting, almost out of breath the whole time. This whole concept scares me a little, and brings up awful childhood memories of the President's Challenge in gym class, where we'd be running the track, and I was always the last one, sweating and breathing heavy just trying to catch up to the rest of the class. But that story's for another post...

We ran from 91st street up to 94th, turned around and ran down to 84th near Cleopatra's needle, then back again to 94th, back to Cleo's and back again to 91st. It sounds pretty tame, but then the coaches told us to spend the bulk of it at this panting pace. Like if you can normally say, "Hey, running in the snow sucks." You should now only be able to say, "Hey, ru..."

It's kind of amazing how just when you get comfortable, life throws you curveballs. Okay so tonight wasn't anything too dramatic. It's not like I keeled over from the extra huffing and puffing--I finished in plenty of time. But after Saturday's four-miler run hungover (see last post), it had been fun to think I'd totally already become an elite marathoner and my success in Rome was completely assured. Feeling that uncomfortable, once-familiar burn for the entire 45 minutes once again reminded me that I've got a long way to go.

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