An Early Season Training Day

Today is one of those days when everything goes right.

The day dawns with heavy cloud cover from an overnight storm, but within hours the sky begins to clear, and pieces of bright blue New Mexican sky, so much the norm here, begin to show and bring promise of a perfect training day.

Its one of those days that leaves you feeling tired, but refreshed by your own accomplishments.

One of those days where you find yourself breathing in a little bit deeper--just so you can sense that worked-out, expanded lung feeling that comes with taking yourself further than your body is accustomed to.

One of those days where you persevere--
--and then you lay on the couch and eat ice cream


This morning we took a 9 mile run from the door step of our house. It was a somewhat early morning run. We bundled up against the winter-thin air and bright, cool sunlight in tights, thermal tops, gloves, and sun screen. The run was familiar--a route used during the winter for short runs squeezed in after work, hurriedly running out the door with the temperature dropping and the skin freezing on our faces.

Today we started on the same route, but kept on going, cornering smoothly on carless roads, picking the best line from the entire width of the street, ups and downs with brief rests at intersections, breathing hard, pounding a tempo to promote leg turnover.

"Go," I'd tell myself, "go."

"Pick up those legs."

"In a race, you can't go slow. Feel it."

Most of our long runs are done in other locations. We eat a good breakfast and drive. Once we get to where we're going, I can almost feel myself sinking into that long distance, tired legs torpor, even before we begin. When we start, I go slow, gasping for air while my body adjusts to oxygen debt and elevation, taking miles to warm up, barely moving uphill, unable to pick up speed on the downhill.

Today, however, we're running on familiar ground--familiar for running hard and quick--and our pace picks up from long slow distance to tempo, pounding rough, gray pavement underfoot, breathing hard, eating up the distance instead of barely slogging through. What we're doing here is modeling. In this place, we run fast. That's the model. So, today, even though it's a long run, fast it is. In the end, we're running a negative split. We finish happy, out of breath, and tired, flopping into the house for calories and the couch. Our lungs feel used and a little stretched out.

We take the break, gather ourselves, and head out for a long distance swim. It takes a little convincing to ourselves, but we end up at the pool. The water feels good, and it feels great to float prone, rather than standing on our feet. We start easy, feeling good in the water, but end (again) with a negative split. Midway through, after warming up for a good half mile, we feel strong enough to stretch out and pull hard--then hunger appears and our pace picks up for another reason. In the end, we're pulling hard and breathing hard, panting when we stop at the end of the pool. By the time we're done, we're ready for lunch, and more time on the couch.

Ice cream, it is.

As I said, today is one of those days when everything goes just right.