Most would say that a blog with this title is a bad thing but in reality, it is very good. Hurting is one of those things that takes some getting used to. I was reflecting on my training for the past year and realized a few things. First, I had only done a handful of workouts since the last workouts before my conference track meet last May. Those workouts were generally longer, threshold type ones and they didn't hurt that bad. I have only run 2 races, one 5k and one 10k, neither fast, and they both hurt!
I have done a few workouts in the last few weeks, a tempo run with the High Plains Harriers where I just had to mentally focus on Ragan's back and hold on. Later that week, I ran my first track workout in nearly 6 months. It was composed of 200s and 400s. 200s are mentally easy unless they are super fast and I assure you that these were not. 400s were slightly harder but not too bad. Towards the middle of the workout I started wondering if my recoveries were even helping. That is one of the main things that I have noticed at 7200' is that it takes longer to recover both during and after runs and workouts. But, even if I didn't feel good at the start of an interval, I got through it and it wasn't really that bad. It really is just getting used to running a faster pace than my daily runs which are not very fast at all.
