Mystery Track Workout

At the beginning of every week, Meghan (our training coach) sends us an email with the week's plan for runs.  Wednesdays are always track workouts and at the bottom of the email she always includes what the workout is for the track...except this week.  The only thing she said in the email was to show up at the track without our watches, i-pods or anything else that we can be "plugged into". 

So of course this instilled instant fear in me.  Running without my watch was OK...but not knowing the workout was driving me crazy!  It would be fine if I never knew the workouts ahead of time.  But since I normally know what I'm in for as soon as I get the weekly emails, I've gotten used to having that knowledge.  Fear of the unknown!!!

I went to the track without my watch but my gut was full of butterflies about what torture was ahead of me.  I love track workouts...so I really should not have been so scared.  But I was really nervous with all the secrecy.

It turns out that the workout was pretty brutal.  2 laps easy, 1 lap hard, 1 lap easy, 2 laps hard, 1 lap easy, 3 laps hard, 1 lap easy, 3 laps hard, 1 lap easy, 2 laps hard, 1 lap easy, 1 lap hard, 2 laps easy.  Add in the warmup and cool down and we ran 6 miles.  I ran with Heather who is a really good match for me and my running pace. 

So in the end, Meghan just wanted to remind us to listen to our bodies when we run.  She said that so many times we are slaves to our watches and don't think a run is successful unless we hit some arbitrary number on the watch.  She said that sometimes we need to remember just to run...and enjoy it.  That part was a good reminder for me.  It's also a lot of the reason that I never run with music.  I feel like that distracts me too much from the enjoyment of the run.  I can't even believe I'm making a statement like "the enjoyment of the run" because such a short time ago I never would have thought that there would be any enjoyment in running.  But here I am...enjoying running!