Wonders of a Positive Attitude

Yeah, all that glitters is gold – right!!!???

Not always, but last week I did a great 6 x .50, with .25 recoveries and thought that it was one of the best workouts that I have had in a long time. Fast forward a week and I have been planning on doing the same workout again today.

This is what Bennie and I did this afternoon after today’s workout.

Why?

Well I am doing the Hansons Half Plan and I didn’t want to screw around with the math last week when it was scheduled to be 600m repeats, with 400m recoveries. In all my wisdom I figured it would be easier on the old noggin to just focus on running half mile repeats than attempting to figure out the 600 conversion and keeping track of everything.

I will most likely do the same thing next week with the 1K, 1200m repeat workouts and convert them to .75 fast repeats for the sake of convenience. Although I might do the first week a little slower (10K race pace) to focus on completing the workout.

Okay, so I knew that I could do the workout and focused on only being positive all weekend about this workout that in the past I found to be right on the edge of my mental want to do, more than my physical ability. I really was not always that positive about running fast repeats beyond .25.

Since I knew that I could do the workout, I wanted to make it more challenging for the old noggin. Last week my pace started with a 7: in front of it, today I ran with a pace that started with a 6: instead. It was not a significant difference in speed, but mentally going from a 7 to 6 is a big deal for me.

While the paces are not the paces that the treadmill said I was doing, it gives an idea of what I did for a workout.

Everything went well during the run and while the last one did get a bit tougher and I had to really focus on getting it done – I did. Then I played around a little more with the “cool-down” and while it was pretty much slower, the last half mile was at half marathon race pace or faster.

Yeah, I know – at the same time I do like to finish out a run at race pace or faster for the last bit, especially when I am tired, I like to get used to running at that pace in a fatigued state.

The New Balance Beacons went over 100 miles and my thoughts about them from my 50 mile review are if anything better than they were when I wrote that blog post – extremely positive. Actually, if I had to choose just one pair of shoes to do the majority of my running, it would be the Beacons, they just work well for me.

Overall, it was a better workout if you simply look at the numbers, but last week’s speed workout was done to prove something to myself and that I could run that fast for that long, that many times. Today’s run was a very good run, but I “knew” that I could do it, it was just a question of “how fast”.

Actually, this is my sixth week in the Hansons plan and while I am not following it perfectly, but it is providing me with guard rails to stop me from being too stoopid – always a good thing.

Now to get ready for my rest day tomorrow. Wednesdays are my scheduled day off and we are probably going to get 10-12″ of snow overnight, which means lots of time behind the snowblower is probably going to be a large part of my day tomorrow.

I am pretty sure that I would rather do an easy run.