Time for a Vacation

Ahh, Tuesday morning reps. My running schedule this year is all over the place, but I love my Tuesday speed session. If nothing else, it keeps me honest. Especially when I'm always having to write down my times!
Today we did 500m reps with 500m recovery. I love 500m reps. Anything less than 1k is pretty exciting for me.
My goal time was a 4.38 pace, translating to a 2.19min rep. I went out on the first one with the plan of going at a hard pace but not my hardest - my aim was consistency over speed today. We had 7 reps and I knew that if I went my hardest I wouldn't be able to keep the same pace. My split times were as follows:
2.12 / 2.13 / 2.14 / 2.12 / 2.17 / 2.15
A little too much variation for my liking. Just shows I should have slowed the first one down by a bit and kept to that time. But I did focus on my form a little bit. And maybe it's just me...but I think my form is improving a little bit.
I was tired at the end of the session (too much junk food eating has made me much more sluggish this week!). It wasn't long before I realized I'd fallen behind the group, so I picked it up a bit and chatted with one of the girls on the way back. I cut short a corner through the long grass and...

Yep. I hit a hidden stump and over I went. The grass was slick from morning dew and it felt a bit like one of those slip & slides I played on as a kid. Fortunately, I stopped just short of the solid rocky trail. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and finished the last few hundred metres. I noticed a few grass burns and as the morning is progressing my knee is getting a little stiff, but overall, no harm done. Score!
In over 4 years of running I've had such a clean record when it comes to clumsiness. And now I've fallen twice in just over a week! It can only mean one thing... time for a vacation!
Good thing I'm going on a nice long trip to the States this Saturday. Perfect timing, really.

Matching Outfits

Any athlete would tell you that the rules of fashion etiquette don't always (or even often) apply to sports. For example, if I walked into a party and saw another girl in the exact same outfit as me, I would have three socially appropriate responses to this calamity:

1. Walk away and never set foot in that household again. Delete all friends who saw me at said party from all social media accounts, change my phone number, move house, and hermit myself away in shame.

2. Cat-fight with the other gal and scratch her eyes out until she leaves the party and never reigns on my supremacy again.

3. Laugh it off awkwardly and pretend it's not a big deal. Less extreme, but pffft! 

But in sport, matching doesn't really matter. You'll never see two people on the same soccer team cat-fight it out when they arrive in matching outfits. Could you imagine?

Flashback to high school basketball: Even our poses matched.

Running has a similar feel. I don't duck my head in embarrassment whenever I see someone wearing the same race shirt as myself.  And yeesh, if I pulled out of a race every time I saw someone wearing the same shirt as me, I would have run very, very few races in my life! ... Because showing up to a race in the same shirt is like showing up to a match on the basketball court wearing your team uniform - it's a mark of community. In a race, it gives you an instant connection with the other runner and is a time-honoured way of saying "we're in this together".

I think it's for that reason - and for ease of spotting one person in a crowd of hundreds - that most running groups encourage wearing the same outfit, as in any other team sport. 

It's...it's...no, it can't be! But it is! Matching outfits at a race!

So the other day when I went running with Chris she discovered that - oops! - we had the same shirt on (courtesy of the Twilight Running Festival 2013!). Chris immediately asked if she should change her shirt to another.

My first reaction...

Actually, no. I just laughed. Because - like any other team sport - we runners are all in this together.

Do we want to kick your butt and beat you across the finish line? Absolutely! But we'll still be there cheering you on when you finish and encouraging you if you fail to meet your goal. And even if you finish before us, we'll offer our warmest congratulations, even if we're tinged a little green as we do so.

Oh, and as for Saturday morning's run - Chris and I ran a lovely loop around hilly Anzac Park. And yes, we wore matching shirts.