Since last Tuesday’s speed workout, I have known that today’s weekly foray into my training plan was not going to be about speed, but instead I would be focusing on improving my strength (mental and physical) while using the Hansons Half Marathon Method.

Strength running is not one of my strengths through the years and I will be honest it is a part of my training that I have assiduously avoided whenever possible over the years.

I purposely have been doing positive self-talk and affirmations regarding this workout. Which is something that I haven’t done in a long time.

In other words the planned 6 x 1.0 mile repeats at 8.0 mph, with .25 recoveries scared the shit out of me. I have never attempted that many mile repeats, so I was going into the great unknown.

Now with all the training I have done over the past couple of months, I was pretty sure that I could do it. Especially, since I have done some pretty hard workouts that should have set me up for success today.

Still…well you runners out there you understand.

It was a beautiful day outside, though a bit chilly to start and down-back was in really great shape, but I had already planned on doing treadmill duty this morning.

Bennie and I headed out for his longer walk down-back and I was thinking positive thoughts about how great I was going to do on my workout this morning. However, of course that meant that this morning there would be something that would attempt to really throw me off and it just about did.

Mary was walking SD2’s dog Hunter and when going by the neighbor’s house, their dog went through her invisible fence, crossed the road and put Hunter on his side, then went for his throat. Luckily his harness and sweater protected him from any damage and the other dog responded to being called back by the person at the house (not the owner).

Needless to say I got a text from Mary.

So I got involved after the fact, but after making sure that Hunter and Mary were okay, shaken up, but no damage done. I stopped over to their house. The dog’s owner was not home, so I left my number and asked that he give me a call.

Now this dog almost always acts aggressively (barking and charging until stopped by the electric shock) when we walk by, but does not go beyond the invisible fence – well at least today and according to the person I talked with at least one other time that she knew of.

So this was on my mind leading up to the run and I came close to bagging the workout, since I really wanted to talk with the dog’s owner. Then I got to thinking that I wasn’t going to let this incident completely screw up my day and I would deal with the phone call when it happened.

However, my focus was not really on the workout now.

Since I prefer to do hard quality workouts on the treadmill, because it forces me to maintain the target paces for the entire repeat, I headed off to Planet Fitness.

Pre-run warmup – check and got 35 push-up done, I will get to that magic 50 in a row at some point this year.

1.0 mile warm-up @ 6.3 mph

1.0 mile @ 8.0 mph

.25 recovery @ 6.3 mph

Mad dash to the locker room – yeah some things don’t change

5 x 1.0 mile @ 8.0 mph with .25 recoveries @ 6.3 mph

Then did enough to get to 9.0 miles total and stopped. I had just finished one of those workouts that scare me and yes, it felt damned good to get that monkey off my shoulder.

While doing the repeats it was not a question of whether I could do the work, it was more I will do the repeat and the next however many are left. There was no doubt once I started that I was going to finish the workout – it was more the idea of doing them them that bothered me than the actual doing.

Don’t get me wrong, they were hard and I gotta admit that I had to dig a little to finish the last two, but when I finished I felt that if I had to I could have done more, which is the way you are supposed to feel after a hard work.

Although when I got in the locker room, I had to go wring out my t-shirt in the sink and when I put it out to dry at home, Mary did comment on the certain aroma coming from the direction of my laundry.

For a workout where I had never done as many mile repeats as I did today, it was a big confidence builder and showed me that I can do the strength work (mentally and physically), when I run them at appropriate paces, versus my old method of running them at 5K or faster race paces and not being able to finish the workout, because I would be hanging over the rail puking.

Great workout, very controlled and no I didn’t add any strides at the end of the run for some reason or other. 😉

Yeah, later in the day the dog’s owner called and we discussed what happened and how to avoid it from happening again. They are moving the invisible fence 6 feet away from the road and will be moving it out back when the snow is gone and he will keep his dog inside or at another house during the day when he is working. He really doesn’t want this to be an issue either, so I am hopeful that there will be no further incidents.

Then I got to get on a ladder on toasty legs, this afternoon, to roof rake areas of the house roof that had built up and were not letting go on our metal roof. Roof raking just takes it out of my shoulders and when balancing on a ladder while pulling snow towards you, can be interesting and somewhat scary, when big chunks of snow/ice come sliding towards you. I worked up a pretty good sweat doing that to say the least.

So it was an eventful day to say the least…I gotta admit that I was very happy with how the strength running workout went and will see how the neighbor’s dog does going forward.

I have a feeling might sleep pretty good tonight.