I find it pretty amazing that since the end of the track & field season, we’ve started our own training commitments of our own. My friend Sonia and I have been training on the reg, logging in the hard repetitions, and slowly but surely getting in all those miles in the beautiful world outdoors. Occasionally we are joined by the amazing Feng Menace twins, or awesome members of the Illinois Ultimate Frisbee Club Team. It’s always the highlight of my day when I go outside. The air fills my lungs and it always feels amazing. From 30 degrees to 80 degrees, everything is fair game for running and being outside in general.
This Medium entry is no fancy-shmancy, arty-fartsy work of literary excellence. By far no, it is just me spewing out some details of our lives, but mostly my life. And not even my life, but just a portion of my life. (But who am I kidding? I pretty much only run, eat, sleep, and eat.) This brings me to the actual content of the journal.
Although training has been proceeding for a few weeks now, I think a good place to start would be the most recent long run. I will spare the details of every training session because I ain’t about to give away trade secrets of the ITFC club. (teehee 😛) Also, I don’t think that would make for a very exciting blog post. Although, if track & field mid-distance training peaks your interest, please do contact me in person. I love guiding and running with others.
Sundays are fun days am I right? For most runners, Sundays are for long runs, and we are no exceptions. The four of us had planned a 10 mile run for Sunday, following my favorite loop around the south of campus. Garbed in our respective team jerseys, I’d say we look like a cute group of runners. It just brought me so much joy to be with the crew and to hear the pitter-patter of our feet jogging along the pavement in our morphing square formation. I’ve always liked the sound of feet running. It was one of those odd things I thought about in cross country growing up and always was fond of.
The Feng twins were quite the energetic duo, pretty much not breaking a sweat at the pace we took, clearly in great shape. Sonia was also pretty upbeat and was running strong. I, on the other hand, was feeling it and it felt pretty bad. Legs still kind of fatigued, whole system functioning a little slowly, and the coffee I drank to compensate slowly making my stomach feel like a mess. It wasn’t so terrible, but I wasn’t proud of myself. The girls finished their 10 miles but I had only managed to do 8. I’m okay with that given the previous training this week was very heavy and I was likely training way more than them. In a way, I should have trained a bit smarter, but 8 miles is a perfectly fine distance for a mid-distance runner. There’s no need to be too ambitious because it often costs me in the long run. I could have taken the day as a recovery day, but I didn’t want to miss a chance to go on another run adventure.
The girls were chatting almost the entire time and it seemed like a very enjoyable run. I mostly did my own thing after the first 1.5 mile warm up. After 1.5 miles is the start of the 3-mile loop, which I time myself to stay consistent effort-wise at a comfortably hard tempo pace. It was a struggle to even go at a decent/slow pace for the loop. After the first loop, I just died, started walking, and waited for the girls to catch up. Eventually we joined back together again for round two of the loop, but this time I fell back almost a mile in to walk again. No way I was going to finish 10 miles. I opted to take a shortcut through the loop and meet them at the end of the loop, which worked out pretty well!
Afterwards, we all ran back to the origin for the post-long-run outing. It was super fun to talk together along the run and be a team. I definitely would have given up earlier than 8 miles if it weren’t for the fact I didn’t want to slow anyone down. However, the last 2 miles, I suspect my face showed it all- this girl was not having a good time. I was though, in my heart. Our post-long-run outing was a trip to Insomnia Cookies!! (yeeee) Sonia is a big cookie monster, the Feng twins were craving cookies, and I had been talking about ice cream with the crew before we even started running, so Insomnia Cookies was a good option. They are still open for call-in and online ordering, so I recommend giving it a go.
That’s pretty much it. I can’t think of so many significant things to share about, except the ordinary. Long runs are great- teammates are great- cookies are amazing- keep being sane during quarantine! Much Love.
