Running Fast, 400 Meters at a Time

This morning was nice and cool(er), so we were all in good spirits as we jogged over to Austin High School for our 400m repeats. I ran over with Jason and Thon. When we got there, there was a giant crowd of runners which soon sorted itself out as the Rogue Training people moved to the starting area for their workout and we put ourselves together for ours. They were doing either 2x1600 with 4x300 afterwards (Fall marathoners) or a 2 mile time trial (new Freescale marathoners), which made it pretty exciting on the track as we shared that small 400m oval. As it turned out, there was really no problem, but you did have to watch over your shoulder as you finished your 400m interval, to make sure that you didn't veer into the path of someone in an outside lane as you peeled off the track for your 1:00 active rest. I'm sure we messed up their pacing as we were doing fast 400's while they did longer intervals, but that's about the only other thing that was an issue. By and large, the Rogue people were using the 4 outside lanes, and we used the inside 2 lanes, but there was some crossover. Steve and Gilbert basically worked it out for us all.

Anyway, we did our drills, and as the Rogue people started coming around the track, we jumped in group by group to do our 12-16 x 400m with 1:00 rest between. I was in the last group (no surprise there), with Carrie, a new Amy, Sarah and Jan. We were told to shoot for 1:40-1:45. Carrie and Amy were pretty good pacers, so we took turns leading the pack, and were pretty consistent. Since it was dark for the first 8 x 400m, it was hard to check your pace at the halfway mark, but we did okay with it. Jan and I finished after 12 x 400, and cheered on the other three as they did their full complement of 16. Turns out it was a fast set of repeats, at least for me they were. Our last lap was pretty quick, which was mainly because Jan and I were chasing down Frank's group ahead of us.

Splits: 1:48, 1:43, 1:43, 1:40, 1:42, 1:41, 1:42, 1:39, 1:42, 1:41, 1:40, 1:33. Average pace 1:41 (6:47 mile pace). My previous best set of these averaged 1:43, so this was a nice surprise to see where I was. HR numbers seem to indicate that while these were fast, they weren't max efforts. Those average times will hopefully improve during Freescale training, but I'm happy with them now.

Jan and I ran back with Frank, and that was pretty relaxing. The weather was almost chilly on the way back with our wet shirts, but that is totally okay with me. After changing into a dry shirt, I joined Jan for stretching and Gilbert's mandated situps and pushups (he yelled at us as we left the track to do 150 situps and 50 pushups). I did 4x25 of my regular crunches, 2x20 of the "Jan" crunches, and 2x10 of another evil crunch variation that Alex has shown me. 2x10 pushups and 2x15 back raises completed the workout. With the weather so nice, Jan and I had a good time chatting about stuff. I'm excited for all the fall marathoners, especially now that after Saturday's 20 miler, they're on a long taper for Chicago. They're all pretty confident and ready for their race.

For the day, 6.7 miles total, 4800 meters of fast intervals at the aforementioned 6:47 average mile pace. Tomorrow is another easy recovery run, which I'll stretch out a little more from last week's 51 minutes.