When I woke up it was just past three. I was briefly tempted to cancel today’s run too. I was better but didn’t feel a hundred percent. But to begin with, coffee helps. Especially as early as that – certainly for me.
Driving to the track, I contemplated whether I should make up yesterday’s missed intervals or carry on with today’s session.
I had no clear answer until I reached the track and decided more or less on a whim to run easy on Lane 10. A couple of gents who I see at the track joined me, weaving in and out as they pleased. As I progressed, each loop became marginally faster.
Because it is difficult to keep counting loops in your head – at least for me – and because I don’t have a watch that adjusts to the track lanes – I run the track in stopwatch mode and lap myself according to either the intervals prescribed (Lane One) or according to a convenient number that I can remember when running easy (Lane Ten).
Today it was sets of seven loops each. An easy number to remember. Each set was faster than the previous not by any mention in the session notes, but simply out of the nature of a warmed up body. I ran with my mouth closed, nose breathing, to keep at an easy six effort pace.
There is its own charm in running loops for easy runs – entirely different from running at Niti Marg. People will often say it can be tedious and boring to run anything but intervals at the track.
Perhaps so. But for me it is many things – an exercise in patience – in seeing the boys in Lane One run with precision and agility – me in Lane Ten – watching as if a moving spectator – and about simply repeating the oval shape in this most predictable manner.
Writing about Running 