Day 3, Week 8: More facetious garbage masquerading as running tips

I did NOT want to do my speed workout this morning.  Well, let me clarify that statement a bit-I wanted to do speed work; I just didn't want to do the workout on the training plan: a 4 x 1200m workout.  My legs felt sufficiently recovered from the long run on Sunday, but I just didn't want to run for 3 little circles on the display four times really really fast.  I would have gladly done twenty-five 400s instead of those four long-ish repeats.  But the cat wouldn't let me out of those 1200s.

Hyooman.  Get out of my office and onto the thing
where you run to nowhere.

So I did the workout, and I have to say it wasn't the best 1200m repeat workout I've ever done.  I had a splitting headache for some reason and just wasn't feeling it.  And by "not feeling it" I mean "kinda phoning it in."  It all began with me taking 25 full minutes of manufactured slowness to get into my treadmill duds, turn on the treadmill, get my headphones on, and turn on the treadmill. Then I kept having to stop during repeats to do various things way more important than running the repeat, such as blow my nose, pick up a foam roller that fell off a shelf in another room, tell the hubbs several times he needed to get up, and change the track on my headset when I could have easily done it while still running by actually touching the phone literally right in front of me.

Intensely pathetic, I know.  I even left evidence of this patheticness on my Garmin.

Now, that doesn't look *too* pathetic until you look at this:

See all those little downward spikes?  There's evidence of my phoning-it-in-ness.  But I can still take comfort in the fact that I did actually do the first repeat without stopping.  I guess.  And the speed work was sufficient as to call the animals to me after it was all over.

What can I say--if you sweat it, they will come.

So, as you can see, I went through the motions this morning.  But what about those of you that don't want to go through the motions on those days when the run you should get done isn't exactly tickling your running fancy?  What should you do?  Well, here are some things I've tried in the past:

1) Shorten the workout.  Chop off some miles or repeats if you feel the need.  For example, I could have done only 2 or three repeats this morning instead of all four.  But I know that during my marathon I would have irrationally blamed any suffering I would have experienced on not doing those last two repeats and then sat down in defeat at mile 15 or something.  So this doesn't usually work for me.

2) Lengthen the recoveries (if your workout has recovery intervals). Extend your recoveries by a little bit to give yourself a little mental boost by thinking things like "I got an extra 30 seconds of walking NOW I CAN TAKE ON THAT NEXT MILE REPEAT MUHAHAHA!"  This doesn't work for me, however, because all I think is "GAWD I can't believe those 30 seconds are up already and I have to, like, RUN now."

3) Insert recovery intervals/walk breaks.  Have to run a bajillion miles and not want to shorten the run?  Insert some short walk breaks in each mile.  If I choose to do this, I usually do 4 minutes of running an 1 minute of walking.  Unless the marathon has broken me and then I end up sobbing while walking for 4 minutes and shuffle-running for one minute.

4) Tell yourself you'll do the workout later.  Do this only if you'll, like, actually do it later.  I used to do this all the time until my brain finally realized it was always a big fat lie and that was just my way of saying "I just want to sleep in and drink coffee before getting ready for work."  And then when I got home from work I'd get into running clothes and fall asleep in the recliner. 

5) Do the workout you want to do.  Screw the training plan--sometimes you just gotta do your own running thing, amirite?


And now it is time to summarize the learning from this post:

• The cats pretty much run the place.  They let the dogs think they're in charge.
• I'm awesome at phoning in a run.  No one does it better.
• After the cool down on the treadmill I spend the next 5 minutes trying to get animals off the treadmill and away from my sweat.
• Those tips for getting your workout done started out halfway serious but they devolved in facetious garbage rather quickly.  You're welcome.

Tomorrow's workout:  It's all cold and stuff outside now so weights it is tomorrow.