Failed Workout
5 x 1600 with 2:40-2:45 rest except for the last one which was 3:20 rest–location = Upper Merion Track
5:18
5:11
5:10
5:19
5:19
Failure reason: I wanted to run 6 reps. and wimped out.
Hot outside today. No shade. No clouds. Little wind. No water fountains. Broken spigot. Wicked sweat falling on sizzling rubber.
Death.
—————–
I got to observe about 5 sprinters (or football players?) doing anti-Zatopekian repeats today. Anti-Zatopekian repeats are things you often encounter out there on the various tracks across that fruited plain that is our modern-day America–our halftime show–our land of Ritalin-prescribed youth suffering for fractions of seconds, expecting a fucking Main Street parade complete with fattened Shriners wedged into bantam coupes driving sideways and backwards in-between lumbering Uncle Sams on stilts.
Anti-Zatopekian repeats begin with 45 minutes of stretching (lots of arm stretching, lots of heel kicks and shakeouts). They then progress to a single lap warm-up, going the opposite direction–on lane 1 for Chrissakes. They end with a single lap cooldown. In between these bookends, these gasconades, are things like 2 x 200 meter repeats with about 15:00 rest. The rest periods entail chugging Brawndo by holding the bottle 12 inches away from an open mouth as well as doing more of those heel kicks and arm stretches–more trying to keep loose than watching the clock.
The coach of these guys wore a tight-fitting athletic shirt with a stop watch dangling around his meaty neck; he encouraged them by using the word whisker ‘BABEEE’ at the end of every sentence, like “Come on baby! Kick it in Babee!” etc.
The spinters pumped their thick arms; their hands weren’t clenched–open; their heads faced straight ahead, down towards straight lines leading to short finishes. They made ’shhhhh….shhhh….shhhhh.’ noises at the end–tough trains hauled by big, flashy engines used to doing quick work up short grades. Some chains flew; large, over-sized shorts flared and then they all came to a halt. These things weren’t in the spirit of Zatopek; these people weren’t carrying people on their backs or wearing Cold War-era, gulag-grade construction boots. It was pure show. These sad, pathetic 25-second jaunts maybe made one muscle fiber in one part of one leg grow about the length of one quark’s quark. Lactate dripped into their blood for that 25 seconds; it then thinned, diluted by the Brawndo and such; it disappeared; and it came back one more time–just one more time. And then they went home.
While all this happened, while they did theirs and I did mine, a lawn tractor the size of a Nebraskan corn combine drove up onto the infield and got to work. A massive man with reflective shades sat in the turret and wheeled his King Tiger tank around the sanctified football field. He made wide turns and pushed his machine well out into lane one of turn four. He sneered at us while moving his levers; we didn’t sneer back: We looked back down and swerved out of the way, into lane two; we counted the remaining pebbles, turning our heads at 45-degree angles, slapping our feet like panicked ducks swimming in the last inches of a drying lake.