Yesterday, I hit the gym for my first easy run on a treadmill since I went up a VDOT.  It was more difficult than I would have liked, but I made it through okay.  Afterward, I headed downstairs and did two sets of single leg squats with 40 lb dumbells, some seated calf raises and a full upper body workout.

Then, I went to work for a while and left early to see my daughter’s track meet.  On the way, I got lost in a place called “Rainbow Village” for about a half hour.  In our area, the streets are pretty easy to understand.  For the most part, they’re all numbered, so you can figure out exactly where you are just based on two intersecting streets.  Rainbow Village is an exception to this rule.  It’s like a little bizarro world that has it’s own street numbers in the middle the greater metropolitan area.  After a half hour of yelling out loud at the street signs, I finally found the school at which the track meet was taking place.  I pulled into the parking lot and my cell phone started ringing.  It was one of the track coaches.

“Your daughter rolled a hurdle and I think she’s done running for the day”, she said.  I managed to find them in the massive parking lot.  My daughter was covered in asphalt and scrapes.  She was crying pretty hysterically.  We loaded her in the car with her stuff and I took her home.  I knew she wasn’t going to enjoy me cleaning the asphalt out of the wounds, so I offered her some Creme de Menthe to relax her.  She wasn’t having that.  So, she just screamed at the sting as I cleaned things up.  Once things were cleaned up, I applied neosporin and band-aids.  All was good after that.  Lots of road rash, but no major damage.

Enough about her, back to me…

I headed out for a tempo run this morning.  The last time I tried a tempo run, my calf cramped up less than halfway through and I ended up doing two long intervals instead.  Today’s plan was for 5.5 miles at 7:17 pace.  I did pretty well.  With each passing mile, I kept putting time in the bank.  I finished the 5.5 miles in 39:15 (7:08 min/mile).  Including warmup and cooldown, I did 7.5 miles.  So, that makes 5 good quality workouts in a row.