Training Partners

Due to my daily commute into NYC I've spent the majority of the past 5yrs training almost entirely by myself. This can get a bit dull. It's also mentally challenging to really push on some of those key workouts. One can think of a thousand reasons to pull it back a bit, while training solo.
I had a track workout scheduled for Wednesday that included mile repeats. I had performed a couple of these workouts over the winter and I had completed the most recent one two weeks prior to St. Anthony's. My coach has been pushing me to really stress these repeats and find a new pace. He felt that I've been settling into a fixed pace and not pushing myself to another level. Fortunately, I had scheduled to do this workout with my friend, Eric Hodska. There was an immediate impact of having a training partner to push the workout. One of the first things that was noticeable was the ability to key off of someone else and not be completely focused on my own effort. In addition, the pacing and continued focus of the efforts were much more consistent. I have a bad habit of flaking out a bit in the mid-section of some of my harder workouts. While the efforts were still strenuous, they were much more controlled. I cannot stress the benefits, of training with someone else, enough. I was able to drop 10 seconds, per mile repeat, from my most recent attempts. I do still believe that there are certain workouts that need to be done solo, but this was an extremely enlightening workout and much more manageable.