Momentary insanity

All post-marathon & midterm blues aside, I've been enjoying my life the past couple of weeks. I've been content to frolic along, running as far and as fast as I wanted, whenever I wanted, and generally had no running related worries or cares.  I was happy to rest on my laurels and just enjoy life without the idea of any impending race on the radar...after all, I  had just PRed in the marathon, why on earth would I go back to racing without a nice break from spending any time on the red line?

And then I received an email addressed to the Baystate ladies, telling us that it would really be ever so wonderful if we raced at USATF-NE's this coming Sunday.  Blame it on midterm studying madness, the extreme quantities of caffeine coursing through my veins, or the fact that I still get a kick out of the fact that I'm running for a pretty awesome club...but I got this email and was like "a 6K! a cross country race! oh boy! sign me up!"

It was approximately 4 hours later when the reality of this situation hit. Last time I did anything resembling speed work? October 3, a month ago, at the Providence 5K.  Total miles run in the past 2 weeks? Er...32.  Oh. crap.  This isn't going to be very enjoyable at all.

I couldn't make it to Tuesday practice because I had a midterm the next day, but I decided yesterday that if I didn't want to feel like I wanted to stab myself for 3.72 miles, I should probably go do the workout to remind my legs what the whole "running fast" business was all about.  It was just 4 x 800 with 200 jog recoveries, which on paper doesn't sound bad, but when you're running them FAST (and really I was only hitting 5K pace, something tells me it should have been a bit faster)....yeeow.  

It didn't go too badly, I had wanted to get the workout in on the outdoor track but unfortunately some mystery BU team was doing a workout so I was stuck on the indoor track.  800s were at 3:10, 3:14, 3:14, 3:17 and none of them were easy.  Which I guess is fine - I highly doubt my ability to throw down 6:30 pace for a 6K XC race right now, but since my PR is only a 25:39...well...it wouldn't be a horrible thing to shoot for a PR.  We'll see.  It's been almost 2 years to the day since I set foot on an XC course and since I have always adored XC [joining XC my senior year of high school was 100% my gateway drug to distance running] I can't deny that I'm a little excited to feel grass under my spikes again. I will probably be the slowest GBTC woman there but whatevs...I'm sure it will be a fun time nonetheless. And by fun I mean painful...yeah.

Either way, I suppose it will be a nice "welcome back" to my legs...hah.