I’m not fan of the phrase ‘no pain, no gain’. It clearly doesn’t apply to things like winning the lottery – that’s an awful amount of gain with no pain involved. Or what about getting hit by a cricket ball – that hurts and there’s not even a little bit of gain that goes with it, well maybe an impressive bruise to show off down the pub.
There are some situations though in which you have to suck it up and accept that you’re going to go through a significant amount of pain in order to get something good out of it. So although it was raining, I was tired and I knew it would hurt, I put on my running shorts and my best ‘I mean business’ face and I headed down to the track.
What followed next I’ve mostly tried to block out. There was a lot of lunging and jumping and hopping that wore me out before I even got to running in circles. This lunging, jumping and hopping is largely responsible for me not being able to bend down for the past 36 hours. Then there was 12 x 250m sprints with 150m recovery. Ouch. The 250m was taking me just under a minute to run and so I resoned with myself as I came to the start line every time that the last half was what really hurt and anyone can cope with 30 seconds of pain. 30 seconds can, however, seem like along time.
When I thought I was done and could escape back to the comfort of my sofa, there was more. Stretching, and floor exercises which have left my stomach tender to say the least. This also humiliatingly confirmed for me that I have the flexibility of a geriatric.
This was one of the most painful weekends of my life. Yesterday and today, going from a sitting to a standing position and vice versa hurts like hell. But that must mean it works. So I’ll be back at the track again in the near future.
Credit must go to Terry (who is a bit of a legend) who many weeks back encouraged me to go to the track. It took me a while but I did it.
Thats sounds a great set!
I bet it hurt, but im sure you feel better for it.
Or the other option is get the cricket ball…
Lots of pain, but the gain will follow!
(Promises the girl whose intervals consist of run slow, run slower, run slow again)
One advantage of doing a track session alone or with just a training partner is that you don’t get dragged into doing the drills as you did or a session that is not perhaps suited to what YOU are trying to achieve. For example, YOU might have thought that fewer reps and longer distance might have been a better start e.g. 3 x 1K at your 10K pace. would have given you that same volume (3000mts) as 12 x250 but not as stressful I would suggest.
For your marathon training certainly you should build up to multiple mile reps for speed endurance.
In short, persevere, but try to find out what the group session is though before you go and if it does fit in with your marathon aims…do your own thing! Less painful in the long run.
Thanks for the advice.
Laura.