Well, speed class is over. I know I got speedier and I want to continue to get speedier but speed class was really a challenge for me. There is pain in speed work. There is pain in distance training. But the pain in distance training - the nagging tightness, the sore joints, the fact that everything from the waist down seems to "hurt" just a little (or a lot) at about mile 15 - that's different from speed pain.
I only ended up going to 2 of the 4 track workouts. The 5 x 800s (twice around the track as fast as you can, 5 times with a 2 minute "rest" in between) were awful. Of course I could've just run at my regular pace and not really tried. but the whole idea is to try to run fast. Maybe it was the impending lactic acid, but this workout made me feel like I wanted to throw up or pee my pants (sorry - but it did). That's not fun. That's waaay different from the pain in my hip flexors, my left ankle and my right butt cheek at mile 15.
The last class was a timed one mile "street mile". This is not to be confused with running on the street because it was mostly grass. If you didn't run cross-country in high school (and I didn't) then a street mile is your chance.
We ran it twice as a warm-up to get familiar with the route and the terrain. Then we split into 3 heats - the fastest, the faster and the fast. By some fluke, I ran with the faster kids. I was so happy with my time (8.43) until all the other girls from my group, who ran the next heat, ALL came in with better times. It may be a gross rationalization, but I've decided they ran it faster because they had an extra 10 minutes to stand around waiting for me to run mine.
Doesn't really matter though - I ran a mile in under 9 minutes (under 8.5 thankyouverymuch) and that - for me - is speedy.