Kinda Two Blog Posts In One

   I got out and ran on a road last weekend for probably the first time in two months. In the meantime, I've spent a fair amount of time on nearby trails but this always turns out to be a pretty time-consuming endeavour and today I had the will but just not the time.
   For comparison's sake, I ran the same 5K route in the neighbourhood I usually do. I was a little worried that the legs wouldn't be up to it, not having done this kind of running in awhile, but they held up just fine. Didn't try to run fast, just wanted to be tired when I was done and this certainly was accomplished.
   About a third of the way through, it occurred to me that I'd forgotten my phone and this gave me cause for concern---my phone always seems to act like a safety net for me, should anything untoward happen, and I feel a little naked without it. I guess the fact that I was running along busy streets made it seem pretty safe. Unfortunately, it also meant no pics.
   Took a couple of very brief walking breaks and ended up getting it done in slightly over 43 minutes. This , of course, is really slow and I know it, for sure. At the same time, I'm almost 64 and I weigh 226 pounds. At one point today, I was passed by a young girl who looked as though she might have weighed maybe 116. I realize that all things are relative but I wonder if she would have passed me if she'd been carrying her 100 pound brother on her back! And for those of you out there who weigh substantially less than 226 (almost all of you), please take a minute and imagine running with a knapsack weighing whatever the weight differential is between yours and mine and (just for the fun if it!) maybe toss in the age difference at the same time. Then, let's go running together!
   Of course, the above is all sorta bullshit and we all know it but it is a bit of a mental game I play with myself when I occasionally get a little down about my running times. It enables me to tell myself I'm actually doing fine and at the same time it kind of reminds me about how fast I could be running if I maybe lost 30 pounds!
   
    Now, this weekend, I opted for something a little different. I decided to head to the nearby high school track and run some laps. We've had snow here in London but it was just a little and soon it was gone again so it was quite possible to run on a track outdoors in early December and that's a little unheard of in these parts. There's a Catholic high school called St. Thomas Aquinas less than 5 minutes from where I live and so I headed there. The high school I went to, Oakridge, is less than a minute further up the road but the whole track area there is cordoned off due to re-sodding (I think) this past summer.

The first straightaway

This was all very "last minute"
so no spectators!

   I had no real plan for this apart from running about 5K on a track. As well, part of my reasoning for wanting to visit a track was that lately I've been toying with the idea of becoming involved in the sprinting part of running and I wanted to be somewhere where you felt a little more athletic. Somehow or other, being on a track with markings and stands kind of fits the bill.
   I started off by checking out the 100 meter track markings. I turned on the Garmin and started walking one of the lanes. I saw what looked like the finish line up ahead but, according to the Garmin, 100 meters came just short of it. When I stopped and looked down, however, there was  clearly a blue line drawn across all the lanes and I took this to be the 100 meter finish line. I looked back to the start and thought that's a long ways away to be running it in anywhere near 12 seconds or so which is the time I'd be aiming at being able to sprint some day, according to my age. I kind of tucked that thought away for the moment and started to run.

The football field, and , way off
in the distance, the trees of
Kains Woods, one of my
fave places to trail run!

St. Thomas Aquinas. Known
around these parts as STA.

   I ran all the way to the far side of the track and came across the straightaway. I hadn't really planned doing anything differently there but I saw the lanes and this long, straight track with lane markings and I started to sprint! It wasn't a flat-out sprint but it was much faster than I would have run in any 5K race, unless perhaps I was trying to pass people at the end.
   When I reached the other end if the straightaway, I was exhausted and stopped to catch my breath. From there, I walked around that end of the track and came back to the original straightaway I'd started on. At this point I still had no real plan for this run but knew I was at least supposed to be running, so I started up again. Eventually, I made it back to the far side of the track and decided I would sprint down it again. And, once again, I was exhausted. I walked around that end if the track kind if gasping and muttering "holy" over and over again (with the odd "F" word interspliced) and then it occurred to me I was running on a Catholic school track and this sort of gave me the gasping giggles. 
   This, then, became my routine today---a mixture of walking, running, and sprinting. Finally, at about 4.5 K, I called it a day. It was a marvelous way to get in a little speedwork and being on a track will make any future workouts there fairly easy to change up. Why I waited until December to start using an outdoor track is a little beyond me but if this winter is anything like last winter it might actually be doable more often than not!