Speedwork for Dummies

Here's how dummies do speed workouts. On a hot sunny day, wait until the middle of the day to go out and don't bring any water. Then do your workout like it was ideal conditions.

I went out to Franklin Field on my lunch hour. It must have been in the 90s today and I could feel the heat radiating up from the polyurethane. The workout for the day was 4-5 1600 meter reps at 5:45, with 400m recovery between reps. It doesn't escape me that 5:45 was my tempo pace last year, but I'm swallowing my pride in search of a baseline I can work off of.

The workout was tough. On each of the first four runs I ran the first 3 laps a bit slow so that I had to run a sub 1:25 for the last 400 m to get under my target time. On the first 3 reps I ended up hitting them in 5:42; 5:42; 5:44, and in the fourth one I gave it my all to get a 5:48. Ugh. I was worthless on the fifth rep and I did it more to build my mental endurance threshold for torture than for any thought of hitting goal pace. Time for this rep was 6:16, with all of me screaming the whole way to stop.

My mouth was dry and I really felt dehydrated afterwards, so that I ended up drinking water from the bathroom sink at FF. Made it back okay and now just have that nice "worked over with a baseball bat" feeling in my legs. Ahhhh, how I love the track.