Everyday I'm Shuffling

The highlight of tonight's track workout was the Shuffle!!! I loved this commercial so I had to include it for this recap however, this song didn't cross my mind until I was headed home after the workout.  Random sidenote...The song that did come to mind during the workout was Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation because I was trying to remind myself to find my rhythm for the interval paces and stay in the pace. 

Here's a little more background on the workout.  The focus for tonight was active recovery and making our 5k pace seem easy.  The workout went by quick since there was no standing rest.  Instead our recovery break between every interval was a 100m shuffle.  A shuffle is not a walk as our coach Mike reminded us while explaining the workout. The correct shuffle is somewhere slower than your easy pace but faster than a walk.  He threatened that anyone shuffling too slowly would get rocks thrown at them! Believe me, during a workout like this you come to love the Shuffle and want to eke out every blissful second of it!

The workout was 3 x 600m at mile pace.  Then we did a 1000m interval at 5k pace followed by 3 x 600m at mile pace.  Normally, we start a workout with our slower pace and work our way faster as we build into the workout.  Tonight, was bookended with tough pace work over a shorter distance.  The 1000m in the middle was meant to feel like our easy run pace and surprisingly it did feel pretty good.  The set of 600's after that were pretty tough, especially the last one. 

My running partner missed the track workout tonight so I was on my own during the workout.  I was pretty proud of myself for sticking through the whole workout even though I almost had to beg for someone to help pace me on the last 600 since it was getting pretty tough by the point.  Something that helped me tonight was a longer warm-up run before we started that I got to do with Jody.  She ran a 50k yesterday and I had to ask her to slow down...that girl is tough!

It was a fun workout since there were always people nearby to chase after or use as pace rabbits.  The group was really spread out over the track and working hard but everyone cheered each other on or even whispered a "good job" depending on how tough of an interval they were on! One area where our group shines is that the tougher the workout, the more supportive of each other we get.  My favorite "good job" tonight came from one of our youngest runners...13 year old John Robert who called out a "good job" to me as he passed me on an interval.  He kind of surprised me because I didn't even hear him coming up on me...stealthy and speedy! I'm glad to have another speed workout done because it means I get a week to recover before the next one.