A little bit of mud

You know that you had a good workout when you return home with your legs feeling squishy and covered in mud.

Something about speckles of mud all over my body gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Is it weird that I like to get dirty when I run? My mom used to hate doing my laundry when I was on the cross country team in high school because I would intentionally splash in puddles and run through murky mud piles, but now that I do special loads of laundry just for my running clothes I can get them as messy as I like.

Todays workout was mile repeats. My knee is no longer stiff and is thanking me for giving it a day to heal, but I still am sporting several bruises up and down my legs that are a bit tender to the touch still. The bruises are not limiting my range of motion or causing any discomfort upon impact or otherwise, so I decided to proceed as usual with my planned workout.

Goal for the day was 4x1600's at 6:25 pace with 800 jogging recoveries. I started the workout heading into the wind that provided a little extra challenge for my first two repeats. My legs felt well rested because I took it easy yesterday, and today I discovered that speed work after a cross train day can provide great results for my body. My splits were 6:26, 6:23, 6:15, 6:05.

I have been doing a lot of progressive runs lately with the intention to be able to maintain and negative split in my coming races. While I meant to take the repeats aggressively, I had a crazy urge on the last mile to give it all that I had left in my legs. I like the feeling of speed coming from my legs and had a great workout today.

Tonight I am craving a shamrock shake from Mickey D's. After a great workout, this is the perfect treat for me.