"Going to bet on the horses"

Today's run: 5.6 miles of Warm Up at 8:41 pace and VO2 Max workout of 5 x 600 m

(That's what I now tell my wife when I have a track workout.)

I have a cold. What was a scratchy throat on Wednesday turned into a snot-a-thon on Thursday and revealed itself, this morning, to be a full-fledged cold. I have never allowed a simple cold to stop me from running in the past: once you get going, the system clears itself out pretty well.

But today, it felt pretty bad all the way through, even though it is not reflected the least bit in the numbers. Coming back up MLK, I entertained bagging the track workout, and it felt pretty difficult to complete the warm up miles. But I resolved to at least get one 600 in to see how it felt.

• It felt okay, and the speed with which I did it gave me some confidence.
  
• The second one also felt okay. It didn't feel fast to me, but my watch revealed otherwise.
  
• The third one felt rough, and my breathing was labored from nearly the 200 m point on.
• The fourth one felt even harder. Heavy breathing all the way.
• The last one felt okay, but only because I knew it was the last one.

• • •

Let's step back and take a look at the splits on these, then:

• #1: "Okay", 2:18 (six seconds ahead of 2:24 target)
• #2: "Okay", 2:19 (+5)
• #1: "Rough", 2:22 (+2)
• #1: "Harder", 2:18 (+6)
• #1: "Okay", 2:18 (+5)

These compare favorably from the last time I did 600 m splits:

In fact, it's pretty much the same as the second visit to the track. So on the whole, the pace of the warm up and the speed of the 600 m splits do not reveal how I felt (which, on the whole was crappy, before, after and during).

I think I will sleep most of tomorrow so I can kick this bug before Sunday's Long Run.