When I got to the track this morning, I was more than a little concerned that I wouldn’t have a very good time today. The last time I did these, six weeks ago, I ranged from a 4:31 to a 4:14 over four repetitions. This time, my coach had told me last week that I was supposed to be able to do eight of them in 4:13 each. Combine that with some nasty humidity, and things were looking a little doubtful.

I did a one mile warmup on the track at what felt like an absolutely crawling pace (turned out to be around 10:30), concentrating on keeping my shoulders down and doing fast turnover. Once people started arriving we did our drills, then Gilbert divided us up into groups and off we went. The drill was simple: run 1000M, jog 200M (in 2-3 minutes), and repeat. The group before me was Frank’s; they were supposed to do between a 4:05 and 4:10, a little faster than my already optimistic goal so I started off with my regular pack but soon moved to the front.

Ya know what? I nailed it. I kept a pretty close eye on my watch at first, checking it every 100M or so, although that soon went to 200M or more as the laps progressed and I felt more confident about my pacing. The first two were right on the money, on number three I did the math wrong and thought I needed to pick it up at the end and came up 3 seconds fast. Number four was even faster, a 4:08, but number five was back down to 4:10 - still above my goal.

Frank mentioned that if we were racing tomorrow that we only had to do six so I picked it up for the final 400M and pulled off a 3:57 kilometer. I was, needless to say, pretty tired after that one was over, but I noticed that my heartrate and breathing were still returning to normal pretty quickly - as you can see on the HR graph. I was hovering around the low 180s for most of the intervals, but kicking it up a notch for number six really got the ol’ ticker racing.

Finally, just when I thought I was done, Gilbert tells me to do another one! I did have a couple of extra minutes of recovery because I hadn’t known that I was “exempt” from the only-six-if-you’re-racing concept, but was still pretty happy with myself that I managed to pull out another 4:10 after that hard effort and running solo for most of it. You know what though? If I’d had more time, I bet I could have done the same for number eight. Gilbert always says that you should feel like you could do these all day, not be huffing and puffing after the workout is over. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I really was recovering quite nicely and felt more rested than tired at the end of the series, so I don’t think I’m pushing these too hard.

Once we were done with those, I finished up with three 200M sprints (untimed), focussing on form, butt-kicks and high-knees. I was pretty pleasantly surprised on the last one; I did it with a group of faster people and - while I was near the back of the pack - I could basically hang with them. That’s pretty cool!

After that I did a little cooldown jogging, drank a bunch of Gatorade, then headed off to the office with moderately inadequate stretching. All in all, while there was room for improvement, I was pretty happy with the way the day turned out. The other great thing was that I really feel like I’ve still got a ton of speed left in me, that I’m just beginning to get faster. Nice. Now I just have to see how I can translate these good track workouts into a decent 5K tomorrow evening.

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