Intervals Are Cool, I Guess

Ah, intervals.  A word that every run hears with a sense of great trepidation.  Will we be doing mile repeats today?  800's?  Or, should the coach have mercy on your soul, 200's?  Yesterday, my workout was one that use to fill my soul with great sorrow.  16 x 400m.  The first time I ever encountered this workout, I was a bright-eyed young freshman with dreams of what a long interval workout could be.  The realization of what it truly was hit me like a freight train about four 400's later.  "This can't be right."  I thought to myself, as I struggled to regain my composure before the next one.  "Runner's World makes this sound so fulfilling.  I don't feel fulfilled.  I just feel like death."
It was just me, my coach, and the track out in the cold that day, attempting to make it through four miles of pain.  The head coach joined us momentarily after the eighth, stopping by just long enough to tell us that I hardly looked winded, and that we ought to kick it up a notch.  I was utterly horrified.  How could I not look winded?  My lungs felt like they were shriveling in the March air, unable to grasp the frantic breaths that I was hurling at them.
Yesterday could not have been more different from that first workout.  After three years of effort, a summer of aerobic training and high mileage, and more protein shakes than I'd care to think about, I completed the same workout without feeling like death.  It still wasn't exactly a picnic, but running it with the knowledge that each interval was bringing me closer to my goals did help.  That, and the knowledge that I could justify eating as much as I wanted afterwards.  My lungs were still a little confused as to what was going on, but that was understandable, as most of my workouts this year have been aerobic in an attempt to keep my legs from getting overtired in the three months of competition between August and November, and the transition to anaerobic workouts to improve leg speed does tend to shock the system a wee bit.
The best part?  My legs don't even feel like curling up into the fetal position and sleeping for 12 centuries today.  They feel like little chariots of potential.  Well, until I try to walk up stairs, that is.