For uncounted years Tuesday has been the day when I purposely run faster and for many of those faster workouts, I have done them on some kind of track. There is just something about running on a track that calls my name and even though the workouts bring varying degrees of discomfort, in my sick, twisted mind I look forward to those days when I get to go run circles.

Typically, I would have been doing my faster workouts on the treadmill right along, but back in January I hurt my hamstring and the with COVID-19 closing the gym and stealing the time I can leave the vicinity of my home to do speedwork.

Treadmill or my track workouts really have not been a consideration. To be honest since the pandemic started I have been pretty leery of even running hard workouts because I don’t want to suppress my immune system and run into issues with some virus beating on me.  So I haven’t attempted to push the pace too much beyond comfortably hard on my Tuesday go faster days.

Until today.

I have a quarter-mile course measured in front of the house and put it to good use this morning. I planned on doing 4-6 x .25 and 8-10 x .12 at 5K race pace and maybe a few strides at the end if I had anything left, slightly quicker.

What I ended up doing:

• 4 x .25
• 7 x .12

with same for recoveries

Total Distance: 6:01

Total time: 52:47

Overall Pace: 8:47

Shoes: Skechers Razor 3 Hyper

• 1 – 1:49 / 6:59  pace
• 2 – 1:50 / 7:03 pace
• 3 – 1:52 / 7:10 pace
• 4 – 1:55 / 7:22 pace

Nothing overly spectacular, but for the first Fast Tuesday of the year, I was happy. Even though I felt like I was thrashing around like a beached whale on those four quarters. Nothing felt smooth and when I tried to pickup the pace, the old body just went huh, what am I doing this stuff for!!!

Then I did some .12 (200) repeats. When I can’t maintain decent form on the quarters, I go down in distance and see how things go.

• 1 – 49 / 6:28
• 2 – 53 / 7:00
• 3 – 49 / 6:28
• 4 – 53 / 7:00
• 5 – 49 / 6:28
• 6 – 55 / 7:16
• 7 – 51 / 6:44

If I could maintain those paces for a 5K, I would be extremely happy, unfortunately right now that would only be a dream and I need to work on getting in better shape and lose that 10 pounds to run those paces.

Yes, I miscounted, I thought that I was doing 8, but ended up with 7, not a big deal since my form was starting to suck bad and I had hit the 5.0-mile point, so it was time for that wonderful cool-down mile.

One thing, is that this is what happens just about every year the first time that I run fast outside, everything feels off and ungainly. So while I am doing the run I feel like I need training wheels. Then I remember how I go through this process every year, to get back to feeling like running fast feels smooth. Although this year is going to take a little more than usual I have a feeling.

This was my first real test of the Skechers Razor 3 Hyper at fast for me speeds. They did just fine, not quite the pop that I felt in the Zoom Fly SP, but more like I can run fast in them without any problems. I think that if I really wanted to get a fast pair of shoes, that I might look a lot closer at the Skechers Speed Elite for shorter races. A plate in the shoes does make for a faster shoe.

While I felt out of sorts running fast, but at the same time, it felt good to run fast again.