Intervals and Muffins

I’m going back to the track today for the first time in over a month. I’ve missed Cliff and all the folks I run with, so I’m pretty excited to get back there.

I’ve committed to running with Ray, who will be doing a bunch of 400m intervals at 80s (3:20/k pace). That should be an excellent workout to get me back into it – the interval distance and pace seem manageable to me. However, I’m a bit nervous about how my fatigue-y legs are going to do.

My easy runs as of late have been okay – I can get down under 4:10/k without straining the pace. What this means, I think, is that my aerobic capacity is good – I’m just not sure how things are going to go when I push the pace into the anaerobic areas. 80sec 400s will be a good test – if I strain, I’ll know that I’ve got some work to do to get my legs back into shape – but the workout shouldn’t be enough to cause concern about injury. We’ll see. It’s also very hot today (for Nova Scotia, that is: 22, but 26 with the humidex), so that will make the pace harder to hit.

I may be running the Lunenburg 5k this Sunday – not sure yet. A bunch of Cliff’s Antiques are going to run it, so if I can get a ride, I’ll probably run it. But I’ll run without any expectations in terms of time. I haven’t been training at 5k pace, so I’m likely pretty slow right now. No matter. It’ll be good to run one for fun.

The Lunenburg run is great – it’s known locally as the Muffin Run because the post-race food is all delicious homemade muffins. You run to eat in this one, for sure. Besides, the race is not on the Timex series this year, so many of the fast guys will probably pass on it. This means a good finishing position might be possible, even though my fitness is not great for a 5k right now.

Not that finishing position matters, of course! All that matters are the muffins and the post-race lunch with friends.

Mmmm. Food.