Two for Tuesday

Or more correctly, 200s for Tuesday.

Today was my first interval workout of the year, 12x200m, with a target of around 52s each.  That didn't last, as I found myself reeling them off closer to 48 or 49s, so I've adjusted my targets for Thursday accordingly.  It was a bit rainy, and a bit cold (35), and I really am missing the nice weekend weather.  This workout would have been so nice in shorts.  I used to hate intervals.  I did my first marathon without running any - my attitude was that since I'm not on a team, I'm writing the schedule, there's no reason to do things that I don't like doing.  But that was before I learned the secret to intervals, a secret that has made them my favorite hard workout.

And what is that secret, my inquisitive readers must be asking themselves right about now?  You shouldn't run intervals hard.  We spend our whole high school running careers hammering through 400m repeats at a pace just slower than the best 400m we are capable of - burning out before the halfway point of our workout, struggling through until the end, missing targets here and there.  This is wrong and just plain dumb.  I run my intervals at just slightly faster than my current race pace.  This makes them hard, but not unbearably so.  This also produces very good gains in my pace, allowing me to make solid progress without dreading any of my runs.

I'm glad some people are enjoying the nice weather they are getting (not naming any names).  We had our spurt of warm weather this weekend, in the low 60s at a couple of points (but typically in the mid-to-high 50s).  Yesterday morning was a nice 50 degrees, shorts and a t-shirt for an easy 5 miles.  I miss it already.

I managed to spend the weekend doing the exact opposite of what I intended.  I was going to run.  I was going to lift.  I was going to behave when eating.  Instead, I allowed having a house guest become an excuse for not running, not lifting, and stuffing my face like a fat burglar in a cupcake shop.

Most of Saturday was spend shopping for a china cabinet with my wife and mother-in-law.  Let me give you a quick list of my 3 least favorite places to go shopping, in order of how much I dislike them:

1.  Thrift Store
2.  Yard Sale
3.  Antique Store

So I spent a large part of Saturday dealing with antiques.  Woohoo.  Hardly the worst thing in the world, I guess.  After some polishing by my wife and MIL, the cabinet does look really nice, and my wife really did want it.  And when the wife is happy, Adam is happy.  Krispy Kreme for breakfast didn't hurt my mood either.




My wife and mother-in-law enjoying breakfast.


Sunday was spent recovering for me.  A very little bit of housework, a lot of lounging around and doing nothing, followed by not accompanying my wife and MIL to Goodwill (see #1 on the above list), followed by homemade pizza.  Anything that good can't be healthy, right?

The problem with family (especially my wife's family) is that when we're together, we eat ALL THE TIME.  We cook big meals, which leaves big leftovers.  In between there are big snacks and big junk food.  It's all great, delicious, and entertaining.  Until you step on the scale...


Postmortem

I'll leave you with 2 important (possibly only in my mind) thoughts.  First, I think I will post more often.  It should allow me to recap less and wisecrack more (or, on that rare occasion that I've got something useful, philosophize more - yes, it's a word, spell check didn't flag it!).  Secondly, I did something that almost made me cry on Saturday.  We made bread from a mix that called for using beer.  Which means I was forced to pour a beer somewhere other than a glass or my mouth.  I get emotional now even talking about it...