"Pre" Workout

No guts, no glory.  Steve Prefontaine always said he ran on "guts".  That's what todays workout was all about.  Yesterday afternoon, my hips and low back were really tight.  I stretched last night but was still tight upon waking up today.  It was quite cold out, but I decided to do my workout outside (wore long skins on both top and bottom).  "Warmed up" running 20 minutes to the track, my legs felt fine, but my hips and low back were aching and tight.  I stretched a couple of times at the track, then did 2x200 in 50" each and stretched again.  The tightness and discomfort improved to a manageable level, but I still could feel it during the first couple of mile repeats.  Yes, that was todays workout 4x1mile with 2' rest in between each.  Mentally, I have to admit, I was only about 80% into doing this workout, probably because of my aching hips.  That said, here's how the workout went:

The first mile I started off with my legs feeling very good, kept my pace even, looking at my watch to keep on track for running the mile between 6:40 and 6:50.  I was ok for the first 800m, the next 400 harder and the last 400 was harder yet, but doable, but tough, I even began wondering if I really wanted to do 4 of these.  My time was 6:43

The second mile I didn't look at my watch, just ran by feel and tried to keep a good pace.  My hips and back still were hurting, my legs felt ok, and the first 800 was fine, while the last 800 was progressively harder, so that by the time I finished down the final stretch I felt like I couldn't push any harder.  I was wiped out after this mile, looked at my watch and amazingly enough, it was 6:47.

At this point I decided that I probably would only do three miles and did the next mile on the trail back home, going progressively harder so again, at the end, I couldn't have pushed any harder.  Remarkably, my time was 6:47 again.

At that point I decided, what the heck, what would my coach think if I wimped out.  In fact, I'd done the 3rd mile not really believing that I could do it.  What was one more mile.  So I did the last mile going as hard as I could and finished it in 6:56

This was hard, but another incredible confidence builder.  

Sometimes you have to run of guts and ignore what your head is telling you.