Thursday, December 3, 2015

Throwback Thursday #9 -- Negative Splits

In this installment of Throwback Thursday -- blog posts from my past -- I discuss negative splits, and how lousy I am at them.

It is worth noting that this year in training I began running mostly negative splits. We'll see how that impacts my race season this year!

Negative Splits
Today I went out for a three miler, to recover from my long run yesterday. I've always been lousy at running negative splits. 
Part of the problem, I think, is that I live on a highway. Not a major highway, but certainly one with a high volume of traffic at certain points in the day. If you ever feel like things are kind of dull in your life, join me on a long run some time. The first and last mile of my run always takes place on the highway where the cars are flying at you at incredible speed. Between the roadkill on the side of the road, broken glass and occasionally people who do not look while making turns off the highway, it's alway an adrenaline fueled run. 
So I set out early, hoping to catch a pretty dead time on the road. That worked out well, but I was feeling good, lovely day out, so I ended up with a first mile that was about 8 minutes. Not too bad, but definitely too fast for my plan. I ran the second mile at about 7:39, so, nice progress there. In the third mile, I came back out onto the highway and ran headfirst into a bitterly cold headwind. It ended up costing me some time, taking me 7:47 to complete mile 3. 
Overall this is a thing I still have to work on, but it was neat to experiment with today.
Running the last half mile, I looked down at the side of the road where I was running. In New England because of our large amounts of snow we throw lots of salt and sand on major highways like my road to help cars keep traction in the inclement weather. In the spring when the snow melts the sand washes into the shoulders and it creates a sensation similar to running on a very mild, well packed trail. I looked down and saw my vibram foot prints from yesterday's long run still impressed into the sand. 
I've had a rough going of maintaining a regular run schedule lately, but looking down at my preserved foot prints today, I couldn't help but feeling, "Yeah, I'm back."
Now, I need pancakes.


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