Training, Procrastination and Nuun Slushies

I had two decent workouts today.

This morning's introduced a new swim toy - the sponge.  Imagine giving a 6 year old long strips of sponge and telling them to make an octopus.  The result (less the poster paint, googly eyes and glitter) is then tied to one end of a long piece of string, the other end of the string goes around your waist and you swim with it tagging along behind you.

While it provides some drag the point of our workout was to use it to smooth out our stroke.  It gives tactile feedback, if the string around your waist jerks and pulls unevenly then you aren't keeping a consistent speed.  I discovered my kick is fine but on my stroke I slow down when I breath. I corrected it but it's a lot more work when you don't get a mini break every third breath!

I was dreading my run, the main set of which was two times 5km at my half marathon pace.  I dreaded it enough that I employed as many procrastination techniques as I could manage:

- check my email (I wouldn't want to be late in replying to anyone!)
- wait until the last minute to figure out what my pace should be
- post on Facebook 
- put away clean laundry
- search for my spare key
- check the weather online (cold)

I finally ran out of ways to put off the inevitable and headed to the track.

I haven't done as much track work this year as in the past and it really shows.  I used to be a metronome, I could keep my 400m pace to the second. Now I'm all over the map. 

I was completely off pace for my first 5km, the first km was a disaster and the following four were better but not by much.  I managed to keep closer to pace for the second set, and was fairly consistent, but I was still slower than I wanted to be.  I don't know how much the cold weather affected my speed or if I was having an off day, but the pace I was trying for was the pace I ran at the Fall Classic so it is achievable. Frustrating regardless of the reason but I do know now what my focus needs to be through my taper - nail my marathon pace.

As to the cold, it was definitely not warm this evening.  After my second 5km I tried to take a swig from my water bottle only to find it had frozen. I've never had that happen at a workout before. It turns out, however, that cola flavoured Nuun makes a tasty slushy.