Looking back through my logs, it doesn’t seem that I do 800M intervals very often. Its a common distance to use for the run portion of our circuit workout, but that’s not at all the same. We started out doing our 1.6 mile warmup run - I ran with Alex and we tried to keep it slow, but still did a 9:15 pace - and then hit our usual complement of drills. I noticed this time that during our strides I’m comfortably running with the mid-pack, where I used to have to sprint to stay in the game; that’s a Good Thing.

After the normal drills we did a quick lap around the track, jogging 50M and then sprinting 50M. I’m not sure how fast I was going on the sprints, but I was doing quite respectably well. Then we were put into groups for our repeats. We were to do five between a 3:30 and 3:35 time, with 2:00 active recovery between each one, followed by three 200M fast butt-kicks. Sounded like a plan. Jay, the master pacer, was out today (and missed), so we formed up and headed off as best we could.

Our first set was a tiny bit too fast, and we were suitably chastised for it. It felt pretty decent, actually - I think I could have done all five repetitions at that speed, but we’re not supposed to be exhausting ourselves during these workouts. Its a fine line to draw, and I’m just as happy to have someone else help me make that determination. Lap number two felt slower, and it was - a bit too slow in fact (although it was within our range, I was wanting to hit 3:30 on the dot).

I led the third lap, and came pretty close to my goal. On the fourth lap I managed to hang back when some of the people (we had about 8 of us with the same goal time) surged, and came in right on target. A few of the scrappier runners headed off faster for the last lap, but I tried hard to stay on pace; I kept that up (on target) until the last 100M, then David and I accelerated smoothly and finished up nice and strong together.

Time: 3:27 - 3:34 - 3:31 - 3:30 - 3:24
Pace: 6:56 - 7:10 - 7:04 - 7:02 - 6:50

My only problem during these was a touch of nausea, probably due to the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since a large pizza buffet lunch the day before. Combine that with strong, salty-tasting yellow PowerAde, and you have an unpleasant situation. Still, it wasn’t too bad. I only had time to do two of the three 200M butt-kicks, and my gut was at least as much of a limiting factor as my quads, but I still did a pretty solid effort.

That was about it. I ran back alone at a 9:25 pace, which felt a lot slower than that; this took quite a bit out of me, and it was a fairly muggy day to start with which didn’t help. Still, it was a ton of fun and I can’t wait for my long run on Saturday. My 301 should arrive tomorrow and be charged up and ready to go then too!

Popularity: 3%