Speed work was on the agenda for this morning. I was hungry but didn’t want to eat very much because the likelihood of puking on a run increases exponentially during a speed work session.

A small handful of raisins ought to be safe enough. It’s kind of hard see but my little pile of raisins were in my hand underneath the Newman’s Own Organics carton there. It’s almost as if the perfect portion just dropped right out of the bottom like magic. That would be really “handy”, wouldn’t it?

I out the door at about 6:45 – it was only 55 degrees out! I did almost an exact replica of a track work out that I did a couple weeks ago. Except this one was solo, on Thursday morning instead of a Friday afternoon and it was not nearly as hot. Like I said, almost an exact replica.

A ran a slow easy pace for the mile warm up from my house to the track, and then jumped right into 400 meter sprints (one time around the track), 200 meter recoveries (half way around the track), repeated 5 times. I ran each 400 meter in about 1:35 and each 200 meter in just over a 1:00. There were handful of walkers on the track this morning, I was the only runner.

I took the long way home for a 2 mile cool down. I’m fairly sure my total mileage works out to be just under 5 miles and I was gone just shy of 40 minutes.

I realized this morning that this is such a great way to mix it up. It went by really quickly and barely felt like a “real” run. The warm up run there was easy and enjoyable. The speed work itself didn’t feel like running – it was more like short bursts of torture. The cool down run home was easy and enjoyable too and I didn’t feel like I was slacking with a slow pace after a 15 minutes of running like I was trying to escape the police. The whole run went by really quickly. I need to start doing this more often. Sprinting, that is, not escaping the police.

Back home and grateful my raisins stayed down, I decided today was the day to hack into the young coconut I’ve had in the fridge for a few days now. Except I couldn’t find the mallet I use to pound on the knife to get the frickin’ thing open.

So I tried the “hold the knife behind your head and WHACK down on it”. Umm yeah, do you have any idea how hard it is to AIM a knife when you do that?? I hit the coconut each time but never in the same place twice.

OK, this was going to take ALL MORNING at this rate.

I gave up went to look for the mallet again. I didn’t find it but I did find an acceptable substitute. I’m going to leave it “acceptable substitute” because Zak reads the blog occassionally and I’d hate to incriminate myself.

But let’s just say my substitute did the trick and I finally cracked that nut.

This one was loaded with water and it’s contents filled the glass to the very brim! Probably 12 oz, maybe a little more because some slopped out when I poured it into the glass.

And per usual I scooped out the young coconut meat that I swear looks like squid and the only way I can possibly imagine eating this is pureed into a smoothie.  I’m gagging at the mere thought of slurping this down my throat any other way.

After coconut water and came some body weight exercises – a couple sets of push ups and some yoga flows to stretch it all out.

And finally, a breakfast worthy of sprinting to.

Buried underneath that pile of ground flax, sliced banana, spoonful of almond butter and sprinkle of homemade granola was chocolate overnight oats, believe it or not.

My overnight oat was typical mix of 1/2 c rolled oats soaked overnight in 1/4 c LF Stonyfield Farms vanilla yogurt, 1/2 chocolate unsweetened almond milk and about a tsp of unsweetened cocoa powder.

This breakfast makes me smile almost as much as all your comments and emails do. Almost.