In prep for the XC race next week I decided that yesterday would be a good day to do a little workout.  It was cold, raining, and by the time I got home it was getting dark.  It was perfect.  As luck would have it, I was able to recover my training log from my junior year of college.  I had it on Blogger and now have conveniently imported it into this blog, so if you’re ever so inclined you can read all about my deep, dark, past (like..my summer 2005 swim training - honestly didn’t remember swimming even this much, accounts from my second trip to CO to visit Jordan,  my first multisport race, and much much more!  sadly I wasn’t too into providing any details or anecdotes, so it’s pretty much just my training with little fluff.  the log ends abruptly, because I quite obviously get injured…this happens several times.)

I knew I wanted to do the boil, simmer, boil workout, but I couldn’t remember how it went.  Thankfully, I found it here.  You can’t have a bad day running when you’re boil, simmer, boiling.  It’s impossible.  There’s no distance to worry about.  Just boil for X amount of minutes, simmer for X amount, and boil again.  Boils are at race pace, and simmers are around tempo - not hard, not easy.

Last night I headed to my favorite trail and boiled for 5, simmered for 4, and boiled for 5 again.  After running easy for 4 minutes I did it again.  It’s a little different than the original BSB workout, but variations are definitely allowed.  The workout went very well and I’m surprised with how good running feels.  Next week the “race” is totally just for fun but it’s exciting to be preparing for something different…even if preparing consists all of 8-10 runs haha

As you can probably tell, I’ve been very nostalgic for XC lately, which is funny b/c I was never too fond of it.  I really liked the concept of it, but never ran well during the fall.  It was firmly implanted in my head that I couldn’t run any distance beyond the 800.  Now that I’ve run 2 decent marathons I know that isn’t true, but still fall into that mindset all the time…like every time I have to run a 10k after biking and swimming.  Someday I’ll get back into the whole running thing, but that’s a ways off.  I’m enjoying the little bit I’m able to do now, because come October 1st I’ll be drenched in the most chlorinated water you can imagine for many hours a day.  I’ve got some big plans.  …but for now, I’m going to keep on simmering.

Next time you’re racking your brain for a running workout to change up the routine, try out the boil simmer boil, and the best part: you don’t have to adjust your times for altitude!  Cooking joke! AaaYO!!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 7:36 am and is filed under cross-country, running, training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.