The Need For Speed

I'm over the sore throat from hell, for the most part. Paced the interval workout for one of the groups on our cross country team which meant four miles at around 6:00/mile pace, not including breaks between reps. While running, I was fine. When we stopped, coughing fits... not coughing up anything though. Just a battle-scarred throat that is aggravated by dry air and it triggered the coughing.

I'm really enjoying the prospect of working on speed again. After focusing on longer and slower for the past several years, it's nice to focus on getting that pop back again... as much as my 46 year old body will allow. Regardless, fun is fun. I'm looking forward to a few trail races next month as well as some road stuff that is yet to be determined. Bring it on.

Jinx

Total jinx. It was actually starting to develop during the time I wrote my last post, but a full blown head cold has knocked me on my butt and I was forced to take three days off. There's the saying that if it's neck up, lace up. Most of the time, that's probably true, but not in this case. It was too bad also, since last week was off to a great start before I had to pull the plug.

The main culprit was an extremely sore throat that is resulting in coughing fits. The good news is, I appear to be over the hump. I did a test run yesterday that went okay, and I followed that up with a hike up Lead Mountain with Hagrid.

Will play the days ahead by ear, and hopefully I can do some speed work on Tuesday. Perhaps I merely got the bug out of the way early in the year. Onward.

Deep Thoughts by J. Andy

What a great past month. My new job is a perfect fit. My coaching gig is amazing. And my running... good God man, it's going great. I often get to run with the cross country team, which is a symbiotic relationship for which I am grateful.

As a result, my legs are starting to show signs of "pop" that were long absent due to either making little time to run or, when I did make time, I focused primarily on distance. I'm actually feeling comfortable about doing some shorter road and trail races coming up here in the next few months. Yeah, that's right, road races. Sure, I prefer trails, always have, but it seems stupid as hell to not take advantage of what is more readily available. Fun is fun.