Just Call Me Cupcake

I knew, when I posted this on Facebook, that tonight's workout could be interesting:

"Hoping that Valentine's cupcake I just ate will prove to be beneficial rather than detrimental to my interval workout in 2.5 hours..."

I should clarify that, by "Valentine's cupcake," I did not mean a cupcake given to my by the Hubster or a student; a cupcake that I needed to eat to prevent the giver from feeling bad.  No, this cupcake was all my own fault, a product of my usual post-work detour through Target in search of Diet Dew.  I strolled down the main aisle,  made a hard right at the pastry case and--hello there sweet thing, what are you doing all by your lonesome on that cold shelf?  Shouldn't you be snuggled up in a plastic box with five of your closest frosting-topped friends?   Clearly you need some company...(translation: who knew that Target sold cupcakes individually?  Jumbo cupcakes, nonetheless.  The world has certainly changed during the 11 years I wasn't eating sugar.)

So anyway, I bought the cupcake--which was a lovely white cake topped with a good half-inch of white frosting and a drift of three colors of sugar sprinkles--and ate it, as my Facebook post said, exactly 2.5 hours before my workout.

Which turned out to be about 2 hours short of the amount of time I should have eaten it before my workout.

It might have been OK if I had stuck to my Coach TieGuy-prescribed workout, but somehow I ended up getting sucked into the draft created by Sprinter Boy and Aussie Boy, who were doing a workout similar to--but much faster than--the one I was planning to do.  They were doing 400 meter repeats, more or less, and, while I couldn't quite keep up with them, it was fun trying--and a lot more effort than I had been planning on exerting, especially post-cupcake.  The first 400 went well.  The second one went...OK.  The third one, well, the third one brought me to the realization that, if I didn't take an extra lap of rest before the fourth, I'd likely be seeing those sugar sprinkles again.  So, as I have every time I've been faced with the "slow down or throw up" decision--I slowed down, and skipped one of the 400's to give the cupcake time to get happy in its current location again.

Still, cupcake notwithstanding, it was a great workout.  The seven hard laps we did were mostly 36's--with one 35 and one 37--and even the two that I led were 36's, which is quite a good lap time for me.  And I had one perfect corner, which always gives me hope of eventually getting that whole corner entry/corner exit thing nailed down.  So the skating seems to be on the upswing...hopefully, in tomorrow night's workout, dinner won't threaten to be on the upswing, as well.