That Last One

I told Rebecca a few days ago that this coaching I arranged was my way to pamper myself. Things are still hard for me going into the new year, I'm expecting that giving a little focus to my running will be a welcome diversion. But who, I was thinking today, pampers himself by running down to the track to do this:

warm up 2 miles, the opposite direction,....nice and easy.....then 8 laps of strides, the correct way in the middle lanes......this is where you run the turns at a slow jog and then accelerate the straights for 100 meters at the pace that you will be running the workout at....

and then:

10 x 200 – pace smooth at 37.5.

Recoveries are a jog in a circle after each one in these elapsed times:

1) 60 secs 2) 60 secs 3) 50 secs 4) 50 secs 5) 40 secs 6) 40 secs 7) 30 secs 8) 30 secs 9) 20 secs.

Jog an 800 super easy.

and finally:

1 x 2400 at these paces: 90-90-87-87-86-72

2 mile cooldown.

Note the seventy-two in red. That would be the number looming over my head for the whole workout. That's the make or break mark.

Did the first two miles from the casa down to Franklin Field with Kevin F. I enjoyed the company, but it was mostly parallel play as he had his workout and I had mine.

Warm up went fine, although it was long. I was anxious about the 200s. I never did a 200m interval workout and I had no idea what that pace would feel like.

The 200s, with the prescribed recoveries, went like this:

33.6; 36.8; 36.9; 37.1; 37.5; 36.5; 38.0; 36.1; 37.3; 36.2

Just like on Thursday I panicked on the first one and sprinted out as fast as I could. To my surprise, then relief, then consternation, I came out way ahead. I thought I'd pay for it. The rest of the intervals were fine, if a little fast. I was relieved to see that I could hang, and I wanted to hit the times and was afraid to slow up to the point where I risked going too slow. By the last one, with the 20 second recovery, I was sucking air but I could have done another one or two. So far so good, I thought as I jogged the 800 recovery.

The 2400 progression went like this, for each of the 400s:

80.5; 89.5; 85.1; 89.4; 84.7; 74.2

The earlier laps really just set up the last 400. Working backwards, I missed the target time on the last 400 by 2 seconds. This was after going as fast as I can. But looking at the splits it was the other five 400s that lost it for me. My pacing was so off. For the first one I thought I was going at a modest pace but incredibly I went about 10 seconds too fast. This is obviously something I'm going to have to work on. I pride myself for having a good sense for pace, but I didn't have it here. The second lap was good, the third again too fast, the fourth too slow after I lost my concentration after going out too fast on the first 200, and the fifth too fast again. It was a strange feeling, where a 6 minute mile pace just felt really slow; like I completely lost perspectitve. With the energy I wasted on the front reps I could have shaved off two seconds in the last rep.

So the first part of the workout went well and the second part did not. I'm pissed because I really would like to have hit that 72. But I take solace in that it wasn't my fitness but my pacing that let me down. I can fix my pacing. And I think if I learned to relax that would help me. Today was a trip into unfamiliar territory, so maybe that was to be expected. So I can't say it was a bad workout, but I sure would like to have hit that last one.