Spring!

It’s spring.

Want to know how I know? Well, there are some people who wait until they see their first robin to declare spring – they rely on the return of migrating birds. Others wait for the “official” declaration on the day of the spring equinox. Still others rely on groundhogs. But I have a more definitive method: spring is here when our coach Cliff emails everyone to say that the Wednesday workout is moving from the Halifax Commons to the SMU track. The thing is that Cliff is a little shy around the whole email thing. He checks his email maybe twice a month – he sends emails twice a year – spring and winter. So my heart leapt for joy yesterday when I saw his very short but very polite email: “Dear Doug. We will meet at Saint Mary’s tonight. Cliff.” Is there any more elegant sign of spring?

For our first time back on the track, Cliff went easy on us: 4x150m (@1500m pace), 5x1200m (@ threshold 3:34/k), 4x150m (@1500m pace). We were a little fast on the 12s, but not dangerously so. It was just so nice to spin around and around the track.... and without any knee pain whatsoever!

I learned something interesting last night at practice. There’s a guy who sometimes shows up to train with us who used to run for Ethiopia. He was never world class, but he was fast – rumour has it he ran under 30min for 10k. Anyway, he was chatting the other week with one of the guys I train with, and he said that guys like Haile Gebrselassie (another Ethiopian) do their easy recovery runs at around 5:00/km. For a guy like Haile who’s run a 2:03 marathon, that’s really slow. Obviously, his fast workouts are damn fast, but he slows it way way down for the recovery days.

At first I thought, awesome, I run faster than Haile on my recovery days. Then I thought – wait, why the heck am I running my recovery runs faster than one of the greatest distance runners ever runs his? Huh. I’m thinking it might be wise to slow things down on Mondays and Thurdays or Fridays (depending on which day I take off). I can’t run my intervals like Haile, but I can run my recoveries like him.

Back on Track -- Literally

As mysteriously as my knee issue came – it went. Just like that. Saturday I decided to run easy instead of working out with the group, but my knee still hurt. Sunday it hurt when I woke up, but by midday it felt okay to run on, so I did. I shortened my usual 20-25k long run to about 16k, but I put a little mustard on the pace to see what would happen. Funny thing – my legs preferred the faster pace, and by the end of the run, I had less pain than at the beginning. On Monday evening, I did a treadmill run, and felt no pain at all. Yesterday, I could finally run on the Shubie trail – thank god for spring rains – and felt fantastic.

So it looks like I’m back in business.

I’m wondering now if it was something about my new shoes. I’d only been in them about a week when the knee pain showed up. Now, they were the same kind of shoe as my last pair, but the new model changed the position of the post support – they moved it back a bit and shortened it. This, of course, raises the question of why in the world these shoe companies feel like they have to change a shoe every friggin year? I mean, it takes forever just to find the right make and model, and then once you do, they change the damn thing on you the next year, and you have to start all over again. They could change the colour and look from year to year all they like, but why change the shape and mechanics of the shoe? I suppose if I were rich I would just buy in bulk once I found a good shoe, but, alas...

Anyway, I seem to have adjusted to the new shoes now (fingers crossed). Tonight, we’re going to be on the track for the first time since the snow started flying in December. I can hardly wait – I love the track. I’ll have to take it a bit easier than I’d like, but it should be awesome.