Runner's High and Spring Break!

At 10:13 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I officially began my Spring Break.

Though I finished up all of my finals and student government business on Tuesday, Wednesday’s workout was supposed to be a grueling 

20 x 400 meter repeats. 

And I could not possibly get myself into spring break 

mode until that was completed.

Up until Wednesday, I had only ever done 16 x 400 meters, 

so having to do 20 was somewhat daunting. 

It’s not like four more laps is that bad. Physically, I’m fairly confident that I could probably do eight more laps… or even more…. And maintain my pace.

But mentally, in a workout that already takes forever, in the rain, when you are exhausted…. 20 x 400 meters at lower than 10k race pace seems a little…. intimidating.

And on top of that, it’s been a rough week of workouts. We are all really exhausted. Maybe it’s the two-a-days we have been throwing into our routine, but it had been a rough few days of practice.

So I met my friend Annie at the track bright and early, and we began to bust out this classic 10k workout. Being finals week, my coach gave us a go ahead to practice on our own, so it was just us and the track. 

And the 10 mph wind on the backstretch.

I’ll spare the minute details, but I will talk about the last mile. 

We had four laps to go. 

We had only ever done 16 laps of repeats, and we were tired.

“We finished the main part of the workout. 

These four laps are the just the toppings on the sundae”, I said.

And we began to count down.

Lap number 17. The chocolate sauce.

Lap number 18. The whipped cream.

Lap number 19. The sprinkles.

And lap number 20… the cherry.

As I’m sure you can imagine, the end of a grueling workout is not the prime time to be thinking about whipped cream and chocolate sauce. But while it made us a little nauseous, it also spurred us on.

And then, after a cooldown and a major case of runner’s high… 

it was officially spring break.

We were pretty thrilled that we finished. Big smiles :)