You can't cram for fitness

I've been running my sprint workouts at an aggressive pace. Instead of running two workouts a week, I've been running them every other day. I missed Friday's workout, though, as I spent most of the day at a client's site, and the rest of the day working full-tilt to complete tasks by the weekend. You can probably guess I failed to complete all of those tasks.

So, I decided to make up the workout from Friday today. Yes, yes, I know, I know. You can't cram for fitness. Doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

Okay, not really. The workouts target different fitness areas: the straight line sprints are for building speed, the shuttles are for building sprinting endurance. Kris suggested I run the shuttles first, and then the straight line sprints. I'm not sure why he recommended doing it that way, but I trust his instincts in these things (now, anyways. Didn't always, but that was to my chagrin, so now I listen to him in these things - have I always been so stubborn?).

So, after the Bella fiasco, I started my sprints. The shuttle sprints went along okay. I wore cleats today, in contrast to the last time, when I didn't, and had to work not to slip on the turns.

The workout was the same as last week, with the appropriate rest times:

1 stinker, 2 stinkettes, 3 suicides

What I found interesting about the second sprint workout, which was (also with the the appropriate rest times):

7x20, 5x40, 4x50, 4x90

was that my pace and strength varied considerably with the music that was playing on my iPod. Starry Eyed Surprise actually seemed to have the best pace for my sprints. I tried to start the sprint when the chorus began, as it was a great hard acceleration moment, using the rest of the chorus to just cruise near my top speed. I hadn't really used music as a pacer before, so noticing the increase or decrease in effort depending on the song playing was interesting.

The only lapse I had during the workout was after the second of my four 50m sprints. I jogged back and, when the 45 seconds lapsed, just stood at the starting cone. I ended up resting until 1:15 had passed, then started the final four sprints on time. I'm not sure why I had that lapse, but it was definitely the mental toughness moment of the workout.

Finished everything in 42:08.