T-11: Strangest run of my life.

I really wish I'd written this post as soon as I got home from my run. The memory would have been a little clearer, and already I'm started to wonder if I'm remembering this correctly.

I woke up at 6:00 am to do my speed workout, the last one I'll do in Boston before the marathon. It was just bitterly cold outside, so I bundled up and headed out the door. As I jogged down to the track, I said to myself, "I'm insane... the sun is barely out, it's 33 degrees, and I'm running outside in shorts."

I got to the track, and started my workout. Here was the plan:

10 minute warmup
5 x 1000m @ 4:03 pace
10 minute cooldown

That's a pretty easy workout for me these days, but the cold made it a little tricky. My legs took a while to warm up, and my lungs were burning from the cold, but my first repeat only took 3:53 to complete. My pace was essentially a 6:00 minute/mile.

The second repeat took 4:01... I got really tired at the end of this one for some reason.

The third repeat was 3:56. The fourth was 3:54.

I was consistently running a little slower than a 6:00 min/mile pace. This is pretty fast considering where I started with my speed workouts, but lately I've begun to have these crazy thoughts like, "I wonder if I could run a 19 minute 5K. I wonder if I could train to run a 5 minute mile."

These thoughts are dangerous, because I tend to be impatient when it comes to my running goals, and both of those goals would require some serious training, but I've started to get the speed bug, so my next conquest might be speed, not distance.

Anyway, I started my last 1000m, and after one and a half laps I suddenly realized that I was about to run my last lap on the MIT track for a while.

I know this is stupid, but for some reason that really resonated with me. That track has been the site of some epic training runs that have put me in the shape I'm in today. I knew I'd miss it out there over the next couple of months, so I decided to go out with a bang and sprint the last lap.

Up until the sprint, I was on pace to hit another 3:53 or so. I began to imagine what it'd be like at the end of the marathon to see that clock ticking down to 3:30 and me needing to sprint the final 400m. I hit the gas and started to fly around the track... and then something WEIRD happened.

This is where it's going to be tough to explain...

After about 20m of sprinting, I felt my body go almost completely numb, and I got tunnel vision. It freaked me out because I had a similar sensation a couple years ago when I almost passed out from heat stroke. This sensation, however, was a little different in that my vision didn't go dark around the edges, I just stopped paying attention to my periphery.

I became aware that I was in a dead sprint... probably running as fast as I've ever run in my life, and yet my legs didn't ache, my lungs didn't burn, and I really felt as though I could keep up the pace all day long. The sound of the wind kind of died down, though I still felt it blowing on me so I knew that my hearing had changed. About a quarter of the way around the track, I had the distinct impression that I was watching somebody run really fast... I can't really explain why it felt that way, but I definitely thought that I had stopped running, and someone else had taken over and was just watching now.

The last half-lap was just a movie for me. I couldn't hear anything, and I was just watching the interesting scene unfold before me... the ground just FLYING by. I had a little moment of panic like, "This is not normal... what's happening... am I in danger here?" The thing was I just felt so peaceful, and this was so easy so I just let who ever was doing the running at this point finish the lap.

When I got to the end of my run, the world started to fade back into existence, and my body came back under my control. I didn't feel tired, I felt AMAZING. My breathing was slow, as if I'd been walking, and my legs felt as fresh as when I'd started.

I didn't need to look at my watch to know I'd done something nuts... and when I looked....

3:46.

I'd have to guess I ran that last lap at a 5:20 min/mile pace... that's insanity. The nuttiest part was how easy it felt, although I still feel like I wasn't the one that ran it.

This probably sounds ridiculous, and I swear that I'm not making anything up. Maybe I just had a HUGE surge of adrenaline on the last lap and it made me feel funny. Maybe I had an out-of-the-body experience... maybe I had some spiritual revelation...

So that was the weirdest run of my life... I have never had anything even remotely like this happen to me, and I don't know if it was actually just a brain aneurysm or something equally sinister.

Oh well... I'm off to Texas tomorrow. Tapering is going well, I've been trying to keep up my carb intake, and I'm still pumped as hell for December 2.