Blue Wing

On my way to today's workout, I put in a mix cd, "Prison Songs," that Paul, a guy I used to go to Graterford with, made for me. Hadn't listened to it in awhile, and a Dave Alvin song, "Blue Wing", which I didn't even realize was on the cd, came on:

Its dark in here, and I can't see the light
And I look at this blue wing when I close my eyes
I fly away, beyond these walls
Above the clouds where the rain don't fall
On a poor man's dreams

The song stuck in my head when I set out to run and I was ready to fly away. But I get ahead of myself.

The workout for today was:

2 mile warm up, mile strides:
4 x 400 – 60 seconds rest in a circle:
Pace- 69 per lap.
Jog 2 miles to the 5k marked course……..
Run the 5k course in 11.45 -12 mins for first two miles, “ air out “ the last mile as per our discussion.
Cooldown at your discretion.

The logistics for this, what with Franklin Field closed for lacrosse games, were a bit challenging. I finally figured it out so I parked by Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, ran 2 miles out to the St. Joes track, did my thing there, ran 2 miles from there to the Drives, coming out by Columbia Bridge, and doing my second thing there, and cooling down about a mile or so back to the car.

I left with "Blue Wing" bouncing about my head. Now I'd like to say that inspired me to totally hammer this workout, but this is the real world and it don't always happen that way. I got to St. Joe's track and prepared to do the 400s. Now, this is a good workout for me as I was - yeah I'll say it - scared to go that low. Its not a rational fear, after all what's the worst that can happen? But its there nonetheless. Going up to the start, I was visualizing myself going fast, gliding, but what finally resonated with me was the exhortation, repeated several times, to "be fearless."

And with that off I went. 68.0, 70.4, 69.9, 71.8. Not quite at target time, but pretty representative of my best at this point. It's interesting, at times I felt myself gliding and running with my legs, at other times I felt myself pushing and running with my chest and my head. This is encouraging, because I left feeling that I could run faster. And it still tickles me to run a 68. I'm not used to that.

After that I ran down to the Drives to do the second installment of this workout. After pushing it once already its really hard for me to get geared up again to run another fast workout. This is what it felt like, a whole separate workout. It reminded me, very vaguely, of the climactic track workout scene in Once a Runner. But again, reality is more real than fiction, and in the first two miles I had a mental block against going sub 6. Each mile I felt like I was going faster only to fall a little short: 6:04 and 6:01. Not a big deal. But I really didn't feel like I had much to "air it out" for the third mile. In my glycogen depleted mind I calculated, from the quarter mile splits, that I had about a 5:45 pace going but got it way wrong so that I was surprised, pleasantly so, when the final mile split read 5:22. The last .1 mile wasn't marked out and I wasn't in a mood to run any farther.

It took me about 5 minutes to figure out how that 5:22 snuck up on me. Finally realized that I was calculating 75 second quarters as 5:30 pace instead of 5 minute pace. 5:22 pace isn't SuperPowerRangerNinjaTurtleCheetah fast, but it is progress from two months ago when I was hustling down the Drives as fast as I could, after having run less than I ran today, and not being able to hit 5:30.

So today's workout was good but not great. I have been doing this long enough to realize that there is no way to use this workout as any indicator of how I'll do in the race next Saturday. But the encouraging thing today is that, on both the track and on the Drives, I saw progress in my running. And I'll take that as I fly away beyond these walls on a poor man's dream.

All totaled, 10.5 miles in 81:54.