Training Through.

The biggest difference between high school and college for me is the training method known as "training through."

Basically, you disregard running well on a random Saturday meet in order to get an extra hard day or two of training in that week. Repeat this for 10 weeks and you probably are a bit stronger than you would've been had you taken that day easy.

The thing is, this means you run pretty poorly in races, because your legs are toast at the starting line.

This week was a perfect example. Tuesday was one of the hardest speed workouts I've ever done, wednesday was a typical base run, which allowed us to recover for thursday - a long interval workout with little rest inbetween. This made us tired for friday, which was another typical base EXCEPT this time we were lucky enough to have a 2mile tempo in the middle of it.

Flash forward to saturday, and I'm struggling with my warm up.

Not exactly what I would call pleasant.

The race was odd, because I was aerobically walking, but anaerobically obliterated. I kept looking down thinking - "come on legs do something." but nothing came.

I understand this process, I've seen it work wonders. And, god willing, it probably will for me too. But it's not the feel-good challenge that you are used to.

I love racing, toeing the line even with my competitors and putting it all out there. But that's the thing - when we do stuff like this, it's frustrating because I know that if I had taken the last couple days easy I would've stomped them. I ran about 8 seconds slower than I'm currently capable of, and that is fucking infuriating.

But I know that eventually I'll feel good, and I'll get a shot at doing what I do best.

Racing fresh.

It's just making sure I can survive the path there that's the problem.