It smells like track season :)

Step outside for a minute. Take a deep breath. Do you smell that? It smells like track season. :) Which is kind of funny since our track season would always start right around March 13th each year, but somehow I must have blocked out what it smells like to run through snow. Every spring I get oh-so excited when this time of year hits because it brings up such awesome memories.

Photo to the right is our 800 m relay team & also our 1600 m relay team after the State Track Meet my senior year. We placed in both events and broke the school record in both. Yay speedsters, I'm the scrawny one second from the left.

Photo below and left is me and Kim's hand off for the 1600 m relay. Look at that sexy leg muscle! Ha. And the 7' tall leggy monster to my left in blue. Yikes.

Brief sport history: I played basketball, volleyball, and ran track in junior high and high school. Basketball was my one true love, but track was a very, very close second place. Come to think of it, the main reason I was good at the other two sports was because of my quickness. Thanks again track.

I loved that track was an individual sport (other than the relays, of course). I loved that you got out of 2-3 half or whole days of school to go to meets. I loved that I got to lay around with my boyfriend at the time at our camp when we weren't running or high jumping (yes, we both sprinted and high jumped, and yes we were precious). I loved that all that was required of the sport was to run--fast. As fast as you could. Seems so easy. I loved losing to a girl in a race one day (not true, I hated and still do, hate losing), and in two days beating her. I loved the medals that were handed out on the bus ride home, especially the gold ones. I loved taking the underclassmens' leftover lunches and snacks on the ride home with the throwers, because we were hungry. I loved being competitive against myself and against the other area sprinters. But mostly I just loved to run.

I constantly have dreams about running high school track again, and am somehow disappointed when I wake up and realize I'm not longer in high school [note: Please notice this only applies to high school sports and not high school in general. The "glory days" if you will.] I guess this is where my love of running comes from. Even if it is much, much, much farther than a 100 m or 200 m dash. :)

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In current running news, I had an awesome speed/interval workout on Wednesday night. Now you may understand why I look forward to the speedy runs so much. Ha. I did 1 x .25 as a warm up and then 7 x .25 at mile pace (roughly) with .10 walk breaks in between. I did them on the treadmill since I'm still without garmin and here were my times/splits:

warm up .25 - 2:16/9:04 pace

.25 1:43/6:52 pace (3 total at this pace)

.25 1:42/6:48 pace (3 total at this pace)

.25 1:39/6:36 pace (just one because 3+3+1=7, man I'm lame)

Last night I had an easy 3 mile run to do after work. Subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, I always seem to try to beat my Tuesday easy run time with my Thursday easy run time. Which is stupid because it's supposed to be an easy run. I 'm an idiot. Either way, I failed. I got done running and felt like I had busted my butt, thinking I was very close to 8 minute miles or slightly slower, I was disappointed to look at my watch and see closer to 9 minute miles. Oh well. For my easy runs, I should be at 9 mm pace, so ha. My legs are smarter than my brain. Wow, that's sad. I finished 3.02 miles in 26:54 for an 8:55/pace.

Have a great weekend everyone!