(Not) the fast lane

Tonight I have to run intervals. (Since I know that, after doing so, I'm guaranteed to be sitting on my couch with my husband in a Jell-O-like state, beer in hand, watching last night's recorded Lost episode, and since we are off tomorrow to visit my in-laws for Easter, I know this post is now or never.)

If there's any part I dislike about marathon training, speed intervals would be it (hills are a close second). Something about my short, thick legs makes them rather inconducive to rapid turnover, and I'm simply horrible at this aspect of training. When non-runners tell me they don't like running, intervals are the one area in which I can see their point. They're simply work for work's sake. Round and round, back and forth, up and down. I usually start dreading these workouts the night before, thinking about them as I go to sleep. I fear them when I awake on the scheduled day. (It doesn't help that last night we were out late (for me) celebrating a friend's birthday, and I'm still trying to shake off the three glasses of red wine this morning. So far the only thing that Thursday, April 9, 2009 has going for it is the fact that it's gloriously sunny outside, and it's difficult to be in a bad mood with blue skies and sunshine.)

That I am not a good sprinter is not helped by the fact that I don't know how to pace myself. Kevin, my coach, tells me that I should alternate slow-fast-slow-fast, etc., and the last rep should be the fastest. Instead, my reps usually end up looking something like this:

1. very, very fast (for me)
2. very fast
3. fast
4. respectable
5. pathetic
6. embarrassing
7. very fast

The difference between this round of interval training and all those I've done over the last five years is that, this time, my husband is out suffering with me. He's running the Half Marathon in Mississauga, and is therefore following a training plan that looks similar to mine, except that he drops out of every Saturday long run about halfway through (as I like to tell him, he doesn't know the half of it) and he skips one workout, on average, each week (usually the fartlek, in spite of how much he loves to say that word). Running hill repeats or intervals with Zdenek consists mostly of me looking at his backside. He's so much stronger and faster than me that my already slow self feels like the fat kid in gym class, the gap between us ever increasing. It also annoys me that, because he lets me start a few seconds before him and ends up passing me midway through to finish a few seconds ahead of me, his total rest time is longer than mine. This seems profoundly unfair. But I try not to complain because I am grateful for his company; it's true what they say about misery.