It’s been a short while since my last blog entry. Thus, I decided that it was time to change that.
The summer is slowly beginning to come to a close, as most summers tend to do, and this morning in particular came a little too early for my liking. Well, early enough. Hence my executive decision to hit that ever-so-lovable snooze button on my alarm. But today was the first official cross-country workout of the season, and ultimately, the first time that everyone (newbies and oldies) got the opportunity to really combine their efforts. My pre-workout jitters had the best of me, and I dug myself out of my sheets at 5:47 without much hesitation. It still felt early though. Somehow (and I know you know what I’m talking about), no matter how groggy or disheveled the morning makes of me, I generally always make it to the bathroom with my eyes at half-mast. I could also probably be mistaken for one of those monsters from Where The Wild Things Are, with a mere glance of my beastly head of hair.
Low and behold, I drove to school for the morning workout, parked in the ‘park n’ ride’ parking lot under the freeway, and meandered down the road, and up the dirt/leaf-infested hill, known to most UC Irvine distance running vets... simply because it’s the quickest way back up to the track if you’re finishing up a grueling long run or tempo run off campus.
I generally enjoy getting to practice early. And by ‘early,’ I mean one of the first few there. Morning bathroom time is sacred to runners. Especially pre-workout. Not to be gross, but business is vital to tend to. Thus, it’s entirely worth it for me to wake up probably twenty minutes earlier than I need to, in order to enjoy the serenity of an empty college campus restroom, where I get the freedom to nab the stall of my choice.
Not before long, it was seven a.m., and teammates began to filter into the track stadium. A mixture of knobby knees, untied torn-up running shoes, and tired expressions on faces, gathered together before warming up. To my surprise, I found myself slightly excited that we were going to run our tempo workout on our home cross-country course. For any non-runner, a “tempo run” can be described as a run at a mildly uncomfortable pace, that’s faster than a normal distance run, but slower than race pace. The only frustrating thing about ‘tempoing’ on our home course, is always the first mile and a half. It’s all grass. Hilly grass. Your miles aren’t what they are on pavement, and the hills can often throw off any chance at holding a good pace. But we took the first grassy section with (several) grains of salt, and headed fearlessly into anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes of that mildly uncomfortable pace.
The middle section of our course is a dirt hill that seems to last just about as long as you dread it to be. But I legitimately like hills, so it’s one of my favorite parts of the course itself. It also serves as a lovely transition from the sluggish feeling your legs get when you run on grass for too long. The other good thing about hills (now it seems like I’m making a desperate plea for a positiveness regarding hills) is that ‘whatever goes up, must come down.’ I’m no scientist, but I often will get great pleasure in knowing that this is true. That being said, following the top of the gravel-y dirt hill, there’s a downhill portion of the course. All dirt. But watch out, because it’s always got crevices and stumps, and things of all kinds to jump over. At the bottom of that dirt downhill, we wind through a black-top parking lot, follow a path that takes us through a student apartment complex, laden with cobblestones (very annoying to run on, by the way), and then up one last pavement hill, where there’s literally about a half-a-mile until the end of the course--that ends on the same grass field we started on. I had the fantastic pleasure of running the dirt hill, as well as the pavement hill another time through, in order to reach my 40-minute tempo time, but I'm happy with this morning's effort.
I won't lie though. Humidity bothers me like a bug on my windshield. The humid air clung to every inch of my skin this morning, but it was more than worth it to be there, working out with the whole team. It was also nice to get reacquainted with the home course again. The course on which we will run our first race of the season!
Until then, Melissa.
