Trail Running Blog

Semi-Hard Recovery Trail Run

Sunday, February 10, 2002
Workout: Easy to Camino
Time: 14:05 up, 13:00 back Weather: hot/sunny

I didn’t really feel like going easy today because of the terrible workout I ran yesterday. So comng up, I went a little harder, but not too hard like yesterday and many other Saturday workouts that I’ve ran in the past. I needed to be able to control how fast I ran in the beginning of the run to be able to keep up a (relatively) fast pace for the rest of the run. I was at about 7:00 pace coming up, so I tried to keep it at that pace and I guess I did because I stopped and saw my time at Camino and it was a little past 14:00. I planned to rest for 3:00 (the same amount of rest we get during our mile repeats interval workouts) but I think I only rested for two minutes and then decided to head back.

I remember right before I got to Camino, I started getting these really bad chest pains. It felt like a sharp stabbing pain in my chest, which really affected the run. I’ve gotten these chest pains before, so it wasn’t anything new, but I never know when it’s coming or really how to stop it (other than stop running, which of course, is not an option) When I started running back, I felt good. I didn’t know it, but after the first mile coming back, I saw the time and was at 6:30 pace. I liked it because I wanted to finish under 28 minutes (faster coming back than up) and so at 6:30 pace, I had more than enough time to finish the last mile. The first half of the last mile was good, but the last half, I began to get the sharp pain in my chest again. I began to slow down, until I got to the hill at the end of the run. I tried to kick at the end and it sort of worked because I finished with a nice and even time. It was a good run that sort of made up for the bad run the day before, with the exception of the sharp chest pains, which I still don’t know why I got.