Variety

I arrived at Lake Zorinsky at 7:29 a.m. -- 1 minute early as I am turning over a new leaf starting today. Lonnie Gibson won't be able to poke fun at me anymore -- at least for being late. Christy and Machelle (who were also on time) and I did a 3.5 mile warm-up and a 3.5 mile cool-down with 5 miles of 400 meters at 5:40 pace followed by 400 meters recovery at 7:00 pace. This is a good little workout: 5 miles at about 6:20 per mile.

I ran another 7.38 miles tonight with Angee, Kurt, and Charissa. I should have kept going an extra .42 miles and got 20 miles in for the day!

There are countless ways to do 400s and other speed workouts. Some people like to run faster and totally stop between repetitions. Others like to jog 200 meters really slow. Some go nearly all out. Others like to do it only slightly faster than marathon pace. The challenging part about this workout is that the recovery runs were at a pretty fast pace, so the body never gets fully recovered. This workout isn't terribly challenging the first two or three miles, but gets really difficult by the end. I think next time we are going to try to do 6.25 miles worth of these.

Variety is good in running and in life. It would get old eating chicken and peas every night. It would get old reading the same book of the Bible and the same episode of Seinfeld everyday. Even in my neighborhood the houses are different shades of brown.

Variety is an antidote to boredom which is an enemy of life. So variety is good. Practice it today.