Running Repeats With George Thorogood

Usually when you have "George Thorogood" in a sentence with the word "repeats" it means you're a frequent listener to an FM station that either A: is a not-so-classic classic rock station, or B: also plays too much Lynyrd Skynyrd and caters to the Budweiser drinking biker crowd. In this case (fortunately) it has nothing to do with the amount of times he still gets radio play, but may have everything to do with the result of listening to said radio stations over the course of 35 years.

As I headed out the door for the track Tuesday night I didn't expect to see anyone else there. After all it's dark and cold now at 6:00 and who in their right mind would be out running in conditions like that? Well it wasn't so bad this week. Dark? Yes. Cold? No! It has still been very mild and Tuesday was no exception. A little chilly to start but soon it warmed up just fine.

No, my George Thorogood experience happened a little ways into the ladder workout I was running. For whatever reason, while running down the back straight of the track, his I Drink Alone song began playing inside my head, only with lyrics customized for running:

I run alone, yeah, with nobody else.

I run alone, yeah, with nobody else.

Yeah, you know when I run alone, I prefer to be by myself!

Well I thought it was humorous at the time. Until I realized that I couldn't get that song out of my head and I would have to run the rest of the night with it stuck there! Annoying song or not, I still had a pretty decent outing by myself in the dark. Splits were:

200 m - :40

400 m - 1:25

800 m - 3:09

1200 m - 4:59

1600 m - 6:34

1200 m - 4:53

800 m - 3:07

400 m - 1:24

200 m - :36

I was delighted to see that all the duplicate distances were faster the second time. And that wasn't because I sandbagged the first set! I just felt like pushing on my way back down. Add a mile warm-up and another to cool-down and I had just over 8 miles for a Tuesday night in November. Nice.