Faster and Uglier

Long, flat and forever, what it felt like Tuesday night at the track.

So I'm a week and a half into this taper and for the most part I'm loving it. More time to do other things and more rest. I'm never bored when I'm on taper. However, the one thing I do hate is the feeling of sluggishness and tiredness that I feel in a taper which supposedly is normal. Paraphrasing from a taper article from Runner's World:

Heavy legs, a tired, heavy feeling centered in the legs, but affecting your whole body, that you get late in a taper. This is caused by tissue repair in the legs during recovery, coupled with the fact that you are storing more carbohydrate and water late in the taper, will make you feel like you do after eating a big meal," says Dr. Smurawa. In other words, you feel like a slug.

Which makes last night's workout at the track suprising. We were revisiting our 2-mile (3200 meters) benchmark workout that we did at the beginning of track back in February. Back then I ran a 13:38 (Mile 1 = 6:55, Mile 2 = 6:43) which is pretty much where my times usually fall for the distance. I got the math wrong earlier, sorry for the confusion. One lap is 400m, 4 laps is about a mile.

Came to track sleepy and sluggish. I dreaded the workout all day but it was perfect for taper, high intensity but short in duration. Felt a little bit better during the warmup but not a whole lot better. Heehawed and grumbled at the start line and sighed at the go signal. It hurt right away, my form was squirly but not as ragged as my breath - it felt loud in my ears. I felt like I was running on no sleep. Now, I've never recorded anything faster than a 6:30ish for the mile but I blew by the 1600-meter mark at 6:10 - Coach Duane called it out from the sidelines. The warning signals that told me I was going too fast was lost in the general feeling of weakness and fatigue. You should have seen my eyes when he called that out. I paid for it in the next 1600m with a 6:25 but I came through the time trial with a 12:35. Back in February I was whining about always wanting but not being able to break 13 minutes. Well there you have it, as ugly as it was. It also helps that I'm 5 pounds lighter, I'm sure that was a big part of it. I'm always heavier from October thru February.

On the way home I lost my bus ticket and got caught in a surprise inspection by transportation agents downtown. They patrol occasionally, there to catch freeloaders who get in on the back of the buses. Since I didn't have proof of fare payment I got hit with a $50 ticket. It's a lot of money and it bites since I actually paid the fare but so it goes. I tried to be real sore about it but to no avail. I'm still grinning about track today. Progress is such a sweet thing. 6:10 huh, what do I have to do to get that down to sub-6? Can I finally break 22 mins on the 5k?