tomorrow is another day, and there will be another battle

4/3 - 5 miles on lakeshore path, stopped at the track which appeared to be locked but conveniently was not to do some 400 hurdle starts. pretty much had to drag myself out the door...no desire to go running whatsoever.

4/4 - 2.5 miles easy before the meet...legs felt pretty crappy still

4/5 - oshkosh invite
1500 - 5:32.13 (31st/54)
400 hurdles - 75.83 (11th/17)
what can i say about a personal worst? that's one of those things you never really want to have to deal with. you want to go uphill, not downhill...and ESPECIALLY not 2 seconds slower than i've ever raced 400 hurdles in my life. but from the start, oshkosh was not going to be my day. first of all, i'm pretty confident that track is cursed. its gorgeous. its new. its olympic caliber. and i WANT to run well there...but i swear, i have never had a good race on that track...indoor or outdoor...and this is my 4th year in a row racing there. secondly, WIND. oshkosh is always windy...having the track situated 200 meters from a river doesn't help that...but saturday was worse than ever before. the flag was literally sticking straight out from the pole the entire day, and my face was windburned by noon. it was ridiculous. its bad enough sitting out in that kind of crap...now, try running a race in it! but it wasn't just the wind...my legs just felt like dead weight, and mentally i just wasn't there, which really didn't make me happy.

the 1500 was one of those terrible, terrible races where from about 100 meters in you know that its going to be absolutely awful, you know you don't stand a chance of running even a decent time, and there's nothing you can do but try to hang on and survive. i got passed by SO MANY people in the second and third lap...and i'm not good at getting passed. when i'm already suffering and struggling mentally, getting passed pretty much makes me about ready to give up, especially when i can't even make a challenge at the people passing me. i tried my best to stick it out and managed to pass a few people back in the last lap, but the fact that i got blown away by jade by 20 seconds just bothers me, especially since i beat her in the mile a month and a half ago. but maybe i could have dealt better with that defeat had 400 hurdles not also been so horrible. granted, the wind played a MAJOR role in that race...literally, i got blown sideways while over a hurdle...and i did manage to outkick a girl to the line which is always cool, but still, 2 seconds worse than i've ever run that race??!! i suppose i should realize that a) i haven't been doing sprint workouts, b) i haven't hurdled at ALL in 10 months, c) the wind was absurd and everyone ran like 3 seconds slower than their seed, and d) i had a cold anyway and my legs felt like crap, but geez. it wasn't the way i like to see my first race of the season go, that's for sure.

3/6 - took the day off. my voice was gone, my legs felt like crap, and after saturday, i just mentally felt like i needed a break.

3/7 - 7.5 miles total
workout: 3 x [2 x 200 @ 33-35 w/ 400 m jog, 400 @ 75-77 w/ 800 m jog]
for some reason, this workout almost broke me. i still have this cold going on so i was pretty much hacking up a lung the entire time and couldn't breathe, plus my legs still felt like absolute crap. the second 400 almost brought me to tears...it was like the culmination of all of my frustration of the last couple of weeks with my legs just not begin there. the last set was better, and by the end of the workout i could practically feel the endorphins shooting through me.

3/8 - 5.75 miles w/ nicole - bike path/cemetary/regent loop + to smith hall and back to check a class with nicole
it was about 45 and raining...and i loved every minute. this was the first day in quite awhile that i've been like wow, i can't WAIT to go running today. so hopefully that means i'm starting to come out of whatever funk i've been in.

i think my problem lately has been that we've been doing pretty intense workouts for awhile, and i've gotten a little bit burnt out. i just need to remember why i LOVE to run...regardless of whether i'm doing "well" in workouts and races or not, because i think that's what will get me back to where i want to be. its like in "once a runner" where they talk about training going in spirals...sometimes, you have to go backwards a little bit to catapault yourself into new and amazing territory. and i think i'm ready for a breakthrough.