So something funny happened on my way to my fourth 1000m repeat this morning...

Speed work.  I love it.  But not on the treadmill lately.

You'll recall that my last treadmill speed session didn't go so well.  Mentally watching the little rectangles slowly moving around the circle while internally screaming I WILL NEVER MAKE IT ALL THE WAY AROUND AGAIN DAMN YOU RECTANGLES AND CIRCLE AND EVERY OTHER SHAPE WHILE I'M AT IT just isn't motivating me anymore.  So I decided large dog and I would head outside to do our speed session (5 x 1000m), even though large dog has serious problems with the "walking" part of the recovery intervals.

WHAAAA WALKING?!?!

As usual, he was strapped to my waist and he yanked me around like a sled dog unless I actually wanted him to, and then he walked patiently beside me while I wheezed my way through an interval at the required 7:47 pace.  However, while we were walking the tail end of the recovery before the fourth interval, large dog suddenly pulled hard against the running leash wrapped around my waist.  This caused the following to happen:

• Something black flung itself off the running leash and off seemingly into the ether, never to be found again.
• Large dog stopped to look at me like, ".....what just happened?"
• I realized my shoe was untied, so I tied it, thinking stupidly, "That wasn't my shoelace...was it?"

Well, it wasn't (duh).  But I quickly found out what it was that flung itself far and away from the running leash - part of the clip that maintains the size of the loop around your waist.  I figured this out as large dog and I started running again and the loop snapped tight around my waist as if someone was pulling on a waistband drawstring as hard as they could. 

Yeah.  Ouch.

The force of this new dog leash drawstring contracting caused my internal organs to audibly cry out in unison with my mouth, but I was forced to complete the interval like that because my internal organs need to realize that I have a marathon in two short weeks.  I also did the fifth and last interval like that, finally realizing to lower the loop around my wrist so I wouldn't squash something vital on my insides, like my spleen, duodenum, or pretty much any other digestive organ.

Oh.  And this jerk dog finally decided to actually RUN instead of fast walk during those last two intervals, so I had to keep up with him in order to still be able to breathe properly.

Jerk dog extraordinaire.

Which means my 7:47 pace was blown right out of the water, as you can see from that tiny 7:17 over on the right of the picture below.

Buh.

What's that you're asking?  What's that big break in the graph there towards the end of the 4th repeat?  Well, someone called me right then and I had to answer it.  Three guesses who.


And on that pleasantly TMI note, some learnings:

• In case anyone was worried that I wouldn't be able to run my tempo too fast on Thursday morning with large dog, don't be afraid - I have a spare running leash.
• But it's one of those springy running leashes that always leaves too much slack and freaking annoys me.
• You know that little broken piece of the leash that seemingly flew off into nowhere?  Well, "nowhere" happened to be in the mitten of my Saucony Ulti-Mitt.  Weirdness.
• I've never seen large dog sprint before until this morning.  And he sprinted after about 4 miles of running.  He's totally been holding back on me.  Jerk.
• He may be a jerk dog, but he's my jerk dog.
• Can I stretch what should have been a two-sentence description of what happened into one big long idiotic blog post?  I sure can.

Tomorrow's workout: Bike riding.  Or weights.  This decision is still in process.