repeats

OK, so I overdid it; I admit it.

I was tired, too tired, going into Friday's track session. We adjusted the workout accordingly, but then I felt a little warning twinge in my left hamstring. I jogged it out. Then, on my final 400m, I was on pace for 72 seconds when right on 300m I got a much more insistent twinge and stepped off the track.

So I went fast… and it hurt (nicely).

It was grey and raining when I started; I found a straight, flat-ish stretch of road inside Hyde Park, alongside the lake which was slippery at first but also gave me 1400m or so of straight, so no awkward turns necessary. The only obstacles were geese and ducks wandering in front of me, and also the occasional Hooray Henry on a horse. To be fair, these riders are usually from the Household Cavalry barracks and do know what they are doing and their horses are not spooked by runners.

High on a hill overlooking Glenwood Springs and accessed by a steep, half-mile dirt trail is am archetypical pioneer cemetery that contains a monument to Doc Holliday, the gunslinging, gambling dentist who backed Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral and died in bed of tuberculosis aged 36.

I have to admit that on the way up to pay my respects to John Henry, I was figuring out what a great place this would be to do some fast-draw 800m repeats. The day's schedule was for 10x400, but so far Glenwood Springs had failed to produce a flat bit of road, grass or pavement -- Highway I 70 excepted. Then, glory be, pausing at a bench on the climb up, the sound of a ghostly horse-drawn hearse in my ears, there was a vision... laid out before me in the distant heat haze on the other side of town -- a track, a proper running track!