First days of training...

Monday was my first day of training and wow is I stupid. I met with my trainer at a local track at 6:00pm. I had to rush home from work to change and meet with him, and take care of some other business, so I was frustrated and stressed out when I got there. Additionally, I have become obsessed with drinking water, and have to now pee once every thirty minutes to an hour. I made sure to urinate when I got home and changed, but guess what...yep, when I arrived at the track ol' small bladder came calling again.

I arrived at the same time as the coach and did no stretching before hand, big mistake.

The first thing we did was go over my running schedule. He has me running five days a week with a rest day on Monday and Wednesday. My shortest run so far is going to be three miles, and my longest will be two four milers on Thursday and Sunday.

The coach notified me that we would not be doing anything big today, just quarters. Now I am not the dumbest guy in the world, (some misspellings and grammar errors on this blog may prove otherwise) so I figured "quarters" meant I would run a couple of times around the track. Boy was I wrong.

He started me out by jogging two laps to warm up. When I finished that exercise he told me what he meant by "quarters". Sure enough it was running laps around the track. But, he wanted me to run one fast lap, one jogging and repeat until I had run six laps fast and six laps jogging.

Now I have to remind you, I have never run track before, but I do know what run fast means. So when he told me to run the first lap fast, I thought he meant Michael Johnson move your gold Nike covered feet fast.

And I was off. I went into the first turn thinking "man, I am really moving". I came out of the first turn and into the first straightaway with a big ol' grin thinking "I should really become a sprinter; I may be the fastest white guy on the planet". By the time I made it to the second turn my mind had finally quit dreaming and all I could think was "there is no f=&*ing way I am going to able to do this five more times. By the time I reached the coach and completed my first lap I could barely talk. He told me "I think you ran that one to fast, 1.20", next time run it at your 5K pace". Gee, thanks for that information Thomas Timely. I could have used that prior to me coming out of the blocks like Seabiscuit. I was not able to say much to him because all I could think about at the time was me suffocating and my desire to drink a gallon of water. But he was having none of that, "Okay, jog one easy and take your time before running the next one fast". "F*&k you" I thought.

I did all of the remaining laps, each at a progressively slower time. I averaged a 1:50 time for the faster laps and could barely finish the sixth one. There is truth to the saying "blowing your wad" and I am not referring to the dirty use of the phrase. I also had to pee the entire time I was running and there is absolutely nothing fun, funny or rewarding about suffocating, suffering a mild heart attack and having to pee all at the same time.

When we were through my coach reminded me to run all of the "easy" runs at an "easy" pace. Now, I am a firm believer in not being fooled twice so I asked "what is an 'easy' pace to you, because we obviously have different definitions of the word 'fast' and to me, it does not get any easier than walking". "Run to where you can still hold a conversation", he said.

So I left the track, day one was complete, and my legs were tightening up again. I learned two things from this session: One, "fast" is a relative term that can screw up your day and cause a world of hurt; and two, always carry a Gatorade or similar big mouth bottle in your car in case you have to pee prior to being tortured with running drills.