Interval workout (not)

After work yesterday, I went to the track as planned. I went to South Burlington High School and they have a beautiful track. Originally, I was going to go to Burlington High School, because their track is newer. Plus, how many people ever get to run on a track where the high school mascot is the Fighting Seahorses? In a state that doesn't border any salt water?

Did I mention that I was sore from my lifting on Tuesday? Really sore? I deliberately kept the weights low - only 135 on squats and 2x25# DBs for lunges. My glutes are in pain plus some hamstring muscles as well. I'm not good enough at anatomy to know exactly which hamstring muscle, but it doesn't really matter when it hurts like hell. Pain is pain.

So, I pulled myself out of my car and stretched for a while. There was a soccer practice going on - high school aged girls. I was hoping that their coach wouldn't yell at me for using "their" track, but who really cares about a fat old man lumbering around a track?

I do most of my track workouts on a dirt track at Norwich University and this track was quite a contrast. It might have been the nicest track I've ever seen. The soccer field inside the track was astroturf! Our local high school doesn't even have a track and we use that quaint stuff called "grass" to cover our field.

That reminds me of a funny baseball story. Tug McGraw, an oddball relief pitcher who spent most of his career with the Mets and Phillies was asked once about the difference between astroturf and grass. He replied (and I'm paraphrasing badly, no doubt) that he didn't really know, because he'd never smoked astroturf.

Oh yeah, I was allegedly talking about my workout. Ha! Anyway, the first lap of my warm-up went OK, but I was in some pain. The second lap was OK. On the third lap, it was pretty apparent that I wasn't going to be able to run fast. Hell, I wasn't going to be able to run slowly. On my 4th lap, I tried some accelerations. Tried. No go. On the far side of that lap, I noticed that my car appeared to be miles and miles away. I was hoping I could make it to my car.

I thought I was going to fall over. I started to imagine the high school girls freaking out when an old fat guy fell over on the track beside their practice. They wouldn't know what to do. I would know that it was only sore muscles that had me stuck on the ground. But, they'd be thinking about the possibility of a heart attack that had put me there. "Who's going to do CPR?" "Not me" "What about mouth to mouth?" "On him? Ewwwwwwwww!" "Quick, call an ambulance" "Wait, no, let's just leave and all agree that we saw nothing at all"

After one mile, done in 10:23, I called it a day. I drove home and made myself a mojito and grilled some chicken for dinner. The second mojito seemed to dull the pain in my legs for a while, but it hurts again today. My wife and I are planning to run a few miles together this evening. She normally runs at about 12-13 mpm pace. I hope I can keep up.