Well, it had been a while since I’d actually done any speedwork on the track instead of the treadmill, it was a beautiful evening (mid 70s with 50% humidity), and I was actually going to be home before dark again. Luckily, I had my running clothes with me, so I pulled into Bowie HS, geared up, and hit the track.

Have you ever done a workout just because you wanted to, even though you knew it wasn’t what you needed? Yeah, me too. Since I don’t have any races shorter than 5 miles coming up, with a 10 miler in a couple of weeks, I decided to do some 400s. Just what I need, right? Anyway, I start with a mile of gentle running … well, it was supposed to be a gentle warmup but it ended up at about a 9:00 pace, guess I was a little eager. I then proceeded to go out way too fast on the very first interval, and kinda screwed myself for the day:

Time: 1:29 - 1:33 - 1:35 - 1:37 - 1:43 - 1:44
Pace: 5:58 - 6:14 - 6:22 - 6:30 - 6:54 - 6:58

See a pattern there? Yup. I had a nice anerobic first interval, and while the rest were better, I never did get my groove back, even with long 90 second recoveries between each interval. Even so, I should have done at least eight, but by the time I’d done six I realized that I was going to run out of time if I didn’t start my cool down right then (another mile) and head home. So I did. Call it 4 miles for the day, including recoveries. Besides, this let me span an entire paceMinute over my intervals (which I just noticed, and was not exactly the plan when I started).

My goal time for these was 1:35 - and that’s on the McMillan 3:36 marathon plan. I think that I could have done six at that speed had I warmed up a little softer and not blown the first couple right out of the ballpark. Still, this means that I need to be doing track workouts a little more often than I have been, right? Also, there were people walking - slowly - on the inside lane on at least 2-3 of these who I had to weave around, so that didn’t help either my time or my concentration.

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