Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Cross training for tonight

I love when I find new blogging runner friends (BRF's... thanks Tom!) or more usually when they find me. I read a post by See Zanne Run the other day (http://www.seezannerun.com/2007/09/honey-you-look-exhausted.html) and I was thinking about it when I did my run last night. I was thinking about her post and my old coach from Junior High Cross Country. He would always tell me that I ended my races too happy. If I had too big of a smile on my face then I wasn't pushing myself hard enough during the race. Then I was thinking about what if I did just push a little bit harder so that I didn't have a lot of energy after the run. Thinking about Zanne's awesome times, I decided I wanted to do my 3 miles just a bit faster than I normally do. Nothing too drastic, but just push a little more.

I don't really look at my watch during my runs, but I was thinking that my fastest time had been somewhere around 33 minutes (I checked today and my fastest was 33:20). So I pushed a bit and when I ended I looked at the watch and it was 32:30! Woah! That was 50 seconds faster than any previous time! Looks like that speed work is paying off.

On my cooldown walk back to the house I met one of the neighbor's kids. I think he is about 7 years old. The other day I watched him from the living room window tottering on a pair of roller blades. It was so funny I was laughing like crazy! Have you ever seen someone on rollerblades for the first time? It's pretty funny and this kid was having such a time of it!

So, when I saw him on the cooldown I told him I saw him and asked if he was learning. He was he said and then asked if I could skate. I told him I did own a pair and I could skate a little. He was so excited. "Let's go rollerblading right now!" Well, I had a bunch of errands to do, but I told him we could go the next day. "Can we go right when I get out of school?" This kid is so funny! But, I told him when I got out of work we could go. He was sad it wasn't now but he said tonight would be fine.

So that's the plan tonight. A bit of cross training. I don't rollerblade often but I do recall I always feel it in my shins first, so hopefully that will be a good strengthener for them. It should be fun. My quarter-mile repeats will just have to wait until tomorrow. (Boohoo)

7 comments:

Nancy said...

Oh weird, I just did the same thing with one of my stand-by routes. Do I push enough? Let's just see if I can go a little faster... I think I did, but I have to look back for sure. Congrats!!!

The rollerblading sounds fun. Gets my shins too!

Pokey said...

Rollerblading is GREAT! A few months back when I was actually...ahem, *cough*...following my training plan, I used rollerblading as my XT all the time.

This was also in AZ during the peak of the summer, and I discovered that I create much more breeze when I rollerblade than when I run, LOL!

Andria said...

Hmmm, Pokey, that will probably happen to me too! But we'll see, this kid was barely making it away from the sidewalk and I'm not exactly the fastest blader either. Haha!

Marcy said...

You are sooo cute!! Roller blading is awesome for cross training! In fact you just gave me an idea . . .I might have to break mine out. If I can find them LOL

Older German Girl said...

I bet you are making that little guys day by blading with him! You'll have a blast and get a workout in. It can't get any better than that!

Bill Carter said...

Well look at you Speedy. I honestly can't believe how fast you are getting. Rollerblading is a blast and I used to do it quite alot. When this little guy gets really good, he can blade beside you as you run. But he is going to have to get pretty fast. Disney is only a little more than 3 months away and you are going to tear it up.
Best of luck.

zanne said...

nice work on increasing your speed! i remember thinking this too after a 10 mile race i did last spring ... i was aiming for a certain time ... i was running & thinking about how much i loved running. i was in la la land. needless to say, once i finished & realized what my pace was - no wonder i was so happy. wasn't even remotley pushing it. there's definitely a time & place for just running happy, but not while you're running intervals to increase your speed. the happy doesn't come till way after you see the split on your watch! thanks for the link - glad we found each other. rollerblading should make for some fun cross training - bet you made that kids day! good karma!