Crappy, Wet Intervals

Thankfully, Monday was my best long run ever after some crappy intervals last week.

After being gone for 4 days with my boys and neice and nephew last week, I came home to try to get things back to normal for a few hours before leaving all day the following day for a family funeral. So my window for intervals was sort of a "AT THIS MOMENT OR NEVER" sort of a deal.

Well, "at that moment" it was pouring rain.

I left the house in a light drizzle thinking it'd be OK. Then it started raining hard as I was getting close to the track. I actually looked for a place to hide from the rain before starting my first interval - that's the line off the track heading west in the lower left:

It rained for the first few intervals. Then it TRULY STARTED POURING. Like "I can see rain sheeting across the track" pouring. Like "I can't see the buildings on the rest of campus well because they are being covered by the rain" pouring. I had to use part of my 0:45 rest time to reset my insoles because I'd slide off them when finishing each interval.

My workout was 12x200 with 0:45 rest between each. Simple. But my times sucked. I 100% blame this on the rain, and I wonder if I got SOMETHING from the workout just because I was pushing hard. I started each by walking up to the line (not from a dead stop), and this is what I ran:

0:35.4, 0:33.7, 0:33.7, 0:34.4, 0:33.7, 0:34.4, 0:34.1, 0:34.7, 0:34.4, 0:35.3, 0:35.1, 0:35.5

= 0:34.53 / 200. SLOW.

The first was slow, but then I got #2 and #3 down decently. Four and 5 were OK, and then they just got slower as I got more and more beat-up from the rain.

Compare those splits to last year's version of this workout where I was a full second faster for each!!

June 2023:

35.9, 34.3, 33.6, 33.5, 33.2, 32.3, 33.1, 33.4, 33.4, 33.1, 32.9, 33.3

= 0:33.50 / 200.

Here's a zoomed in version of my pace chart:

More moving between intervals early on, more standing on 1 foot to fix my insole later on.

Here's a 6 second video from right after I got in the house post-intervals:


Direct link: https://youtube.com/shorts/JahmGGLnYkg
I RAN INTERVALS LIKE THAT.


Naked at the side door with sopping wet clothes in a pile 10 secs later.

This was meant to be a pretty crutial workout leading up to a big race in a few weeks. And I blew it. I don't know what I'll do for an interval workout this week - I usually mix up the distances, but I feel like I need to "redo" this one. We'll see. Dammit.