My first speed workout was scheduled for yesterday and went so quickly it took no time at all. I mean that literally though since it never happened. If you’re like me and living in Southeastern PA, then you know that there’s currently 20-24 inches of white stuff still sitting on the ground. Now it’s true I’ve never done mile repeats before, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do them trudging through snow drifts. I’m hoping to run them at about a 7 minute pace, but doubt I could crank out 10 minute miles with the amount of snow we had. Frankly, I’m not even sure I could run 3 miles in this amount of snow let alone 3 miles fast.
Of course, it’s true I never went over to the local High School to check on the track conditions. I’m assuming they haven’t gotten around to clearing off the track since it took them 2+ days to open the schools back up. Even though I pay my taxes like everyone else, my speed workout was probably fairly far down their priority list. Maybe I’ll give them a call tomorrow. . .
So instead of trying some sort of variation of what I planned to do on the local roads, I decided to bail on the workout. I still got in 5 miles yesterday and today at a fairly high effort level, but I didn’t push as much as I would have on the track. All of the roads around me are fairly hilly so I wouldn’t have a good comparison to the track workouts. And skipping one of my 9 speed sessions this training cycle won’t end up ruining my training. I would prefer to do them all, but one of the key underpinnings of ultra running (in my opinion) is going with the flow. The workout wouldn’t have fit well with the current road/weather conditions. Several years ago I probably would have stressed about missing a workout, but now I just let it roll off my back. The important thing is to stay healthy. I still have 3 months to get trained back up to run 100 miles and this Saturday’s 20 mile run will go farther to that end than 3 fast miles on the track.
Do you let missed workouts bother you?