Speedwork at 6am!

It has started. No other day am I able to wake up so early and function like a live human being. I usually roll out of bed and dread what I have to do that day. Speed work days are different. When my alarm goes off, I jump out of bed, get ready and am hopefully the 1st one at the gym. You would think that I would dread running sprints for long periods of time or for short periods of time and repeating the same old thing over and over with each time being harder than the one before. Nope. I love that feeling that I can hardly breathe and that when my rest is up I'm doubting that I can do another sprint. I shouldn't say that I have always loved this time of training, because then I would be lying, but now when I can breathe after a rep and I don't want to stop running, I'm disappointed and I up the mileage. You might call me crazy, I think I've finally gotten the runner's bug. I probably had it multiplying slowly in my brain when I decided to run the Tiveria 10k, the Jerusalem 1/2 AND the NYC Marathon all in one year. I think that once you look forward to torture at 6am you have gone over the edge. The edge is way behind me.

Today was a great day. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, got to the gym and started my sprints. 30 times 20 seconds each with 20 sec recovery between each repetition. I started at 12.5kmh and the last one I did at 15kmh. It was hard but my lungs and my legs are thanking me for it. Since I had some time, the last minute I ran at 14kmh and then walked it all out for the 2 minute cool down. All this was followed with shoulders and ab work. There's no better way of getting the lactic acid out of the muscles than with a massage. Since my hip has been nagging me a bit, I asked that we work on that when I got to school, it definitely helped and my legs aren't sore at all. Yay!

12 hours later, I'm exhausted, sitting at work studying for my quiz tomorrow. Chinese herbs, now, will be the death of me. No early night tonight... I have one massage to give when I am done here at the gym. Thankfully, tomorrow is my day off from exercise but I do have to be at school by 8 (to stick people with needles! :) )

Friday is a fast paced 10km and then I'm off to my favorite place here in Israel - Mizpe Netufa! One of my friends just got enagaged (to his Ethiopian girlfriend - I wonder if my dad would get to use his shotgun if I did something similar, bringing home one of our own, who likes watermelon and grits ;) ) Its gonna be a party...

Sunday, if the weather holds up, I will be trying my new Nike+ chip out for my scheduled 13k... I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I would like to give a shout out to my brother, Brian, who has the best homework assignments ever. I wish all I had to do when I got home was think up 2 amazing soup recipes for my test the next day. If anyone reads this and would like the recipes for Carrot Basil Soup and Spicy Tomato Soup, I will ask permission from the Master. I'm guessing that Angela was right when she started calling him Master Brian.