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Friday, March 10, 2017

Power Miler Track Club, #2

After a week's break for Mardi Gras, we were back at City Park for the Power Milers workout. After the first week, when a bunch of girls were invited, most of the group emailed around that they had enjoyed it, they'd be back, etc.
Liars. 
Two of us girls (the other one, Kate, is engaged to another runner, so she has little choice!) showed up to meet the guys at the track. No wonder turnout was low, though: it was POURING rain and storming. Band after band rolled over us, and we were soaked in no time.
We started out with an easy two mile warm-up, then some drills on the track. When I've run with other groups, we all did drills together: line up, A-skips, B-skips (it took me years to figure out what those were...I just thought some people skipped weirdly), high knees, etc. But these guys just all do their own thing, whatever warm up or drills they like, then regroup to run. So I did my Myrtles, then a few form drills, then got into the workout.
Naturally, I was running totally alone, since Kate wasn't doing the full workout (and I suspect I can't keep up with her!) and the guys were all, "What's your pace? 5:50? 6:05?" etc. Please. Those time sound suspiciously like my 1200 pace... not my 10k pace!
Waterlogged feet for hours.
We started with 2 miles at 10k pace, and my first mile was just fine. Then the sky opened up. The light rain became pouring, driving rain. The track immediately filled with water, and despite the drains, it stayed flooded - drainage just couldn't keep up. My second mile was a struggle. I huddled down for 5 minutes rest, then started on the 1000 meters at 10k pace, with 200 meter jog. The weather got worse! At one point, luckily during a jog, the wind was blowing sheets of rain and was actually blowing ME around. I got off the track and behind a tree for shelter before my contacts blew right out of my eyes. I have no idea what my paces were...bad. Nothing even close to 10k pace. Water splashed around my ankles, and I was straight up miserable. After five 1000 meter reps, I got three minutes rest before "800 hard". Uh, yeah, right. I was so tired! But the good thing about having a group to run with is that the guys finished it with me: one runner did my first 400 with me, and the other jumped in for the second half. I finished in 2:59, which is hilarious, but hey. It's all I had that night.

I joined in for the 1 mile cool-down, but I passed on the post-workout beer: I was soaked to the skin and still had to go shopping! Yes, I threw some extra clothes over my saturated workout wear and went to the dollar store. Luckily, that super seedy dollar store is already the most bizarre place in the world (and it's open until midnight, which I find intriguing - what $1 emergency arises at 11:50 pm?) and I looked like the most normal person in there.

Power Miler track workout #2: done!
How do you warm up for track? Drills? Jogs? What are your go-to form drills? 
I always like butt kicks and high knees to limber up my quads and hamstrings.

3 comments:

  1. Dang. Good for you for running a track workout in those conditions. I definitely would have skipped the workouts because I HATE running in the rain. So unless I'm in marathon training season, I will let rain keep me from running.

    My warm up regimen has had to change so much since my surgery. Before I did NOTHING. I would just start running. Our running club always does a warm-up, though, so that was fine. Now I have to walk for 2-3 minutes to warm up my hip and I also do high knees and butt kicks. I need to google myrtles because I do not know what those are and maybe I should be doing them! ;)

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  2. You're hilarious. That's why I read your blog. And because you like to talk about running, of course.

    When I have a workout planned, all my warmup consists of is a 1-mile jog and about a minute of stretching. I need to do more, though. Thanks for the reminder. And I will have to google myrtles, too.

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  3. Those kind of workouts with friends are the stuff of memories forever and stories that will become legendary years from now! Someone new to my crew joked a couple months ago that he feels like he was there for one of the several runs we commiserate about sporadically.

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