Track and stadium session

I don't train with a coach or with running partners.  Aside from the runs I do on Wednesday nights with the good people of the Haddonfield Running Company, I'm a bit of a running loner.

Which is what makes workouts like tonight so much more difficult:

• bike two miles to school track.
• one mile run with stadium steps on the homestretch.
• 4 minutes of jump roping.
• one mile run with full out sprints down the back stretch.
• 4 minutes of jump roping.
• 10 pullups on nearby monkey bars.
• 10 tricep dips.
• 60 pushups.
• 60 situps using the benches in the stadium.
• 1/2 mile run with stadium steps on the homestretch.
• 1/4 mile run with full on sprint down the back stretch.
• bike two miles home.

All while drenched in my own sweat from the awful New Jersey humidity.

It's the sprinting that gets to me.  It's excruciating, for one.  But it also feels like I'm baring a part of my soul out on the track, to put it a little dramatically.  My face is contorted into all manner of painful expressions, gasping for air, letting out involuntary gasps and screams, including an enormous one once I break the sprint.  All the anxiety of this new training cycle, the fear that it could all be for nought, mixed with the physical pain, all showing in my face and body.

Nobody wants to see that.

I just have to keep telling myself that nights like tonight are indeed worth it, no matter how difficult they are.