My one track workout for the winter

Today, I accomplished what I hope is one of very few track workouts this winter.  My main gym has a fantastic track.  6 laps is a mile.  It's so fantastic everyone knows it's fantastic.  And everyone comes to play.  It's not a ton of fun for me to be on the track in the winter.  It's so crowded it becomes un-fun.  I view it as more of an "I can't do every single run on the treadmill" kind of thing.  Today, I wanted to run longer than the -20* wind chills would've allowed outside, and I'd been on the treadmill a ton in the past few days.  So I put on my Patient Pants and headed to the track with everyone else.

My mental prep really helped, because I hated being on the track much less than usual at first.  At first I was enjoying being with so many other runners.  After a while the runners mostly dispersed and I was left with walkers which was significantly less fun.  Why must you walk in the running lane?!?  But by then, I was deep into the workout and set on finishing.

The workout itself was one I've talked about before.  It's a descending ladder.  Run 7 laps, walk 1, run 6 laps, walk 1.  Etc. Each set winds up being a slightly faster pace than the one before.  I'm calling this my Race Pace workout for the week.  (Side note, Race Pace workouts may have been the missing ingredient in the 'what should I do besides long runs' question.) This is my heart rate for the workout.  I was nice and aerobic for 1 of the 7 intervals.  Oh well.  Something to shoot for in the future.

There were three ingredients to success in this workout.

First - I told myself that I absolutely had to run the 7 lap interval because that would be mile, and I should give the 6 laps one a try too, and after that if the track was insane or I felt bad I could stop.  Since I never had any pressure to finish, I focused on running in a way that felt good and got to the end nicely.

Second - I'd planned a trip to Seward Co-op afterwards and promised myself a Latte for post run fueling.  It's half milk which is good protein and sugar.

Third - I had a dinner date at Revival.  I knew I'd feel better about eating all the fried chicken and cheesy grits if I had a good workout under my belt today.  I feel so much less guilt about food on days I've worked out hard.  That's probably a post all it's own.  For the locals, the secret to Revival is have your entire party present and ready to be seated by 5pm.  Otherwise, plan to wait at least an hour.  I am not joking.