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May 11, 2006

Track Night

For the past few weeks, I've been hitting the track on Wednesday nights. No, I haven't been playing the ponies. Instead, I've been going to speedwork sessions. A track coach from one of the local universities runs these over the summer, and they're at a nearby high school. Every Wednesday at 6, about 10 of us gather, pay the coach, and then he takes us through our workout. The specifics are a little different every week, but we usually end up running about 5000m total, at or under 5K pace.

It is, without a doubt, a total ass-kicker... but I love it. The cost is minimal, and it's so completely worth it. For starters, I get to run with other people. Since I do nearly all my training solo, this is huge for me. Now, most of the people there run much faster than I do, so it's not so much running with people as having other people out on the track running while I am, but it's still far far better than doing it all on my own. Plus, there's someone to call out the splits every lap, which is awesome. I don't have to worry about what to do or keeping track of it on my own. The coach takes care of all of that for us.

The first couple of weeks were tough mostly because I was still figuring out what I was doing and how hard I should be running. However, by last week, I felt like I had the hang of it. I went out there, kicked out my five 1000m repeats and got a little faster with each one. It was good.

This week was 2000m repeats, which sort of scared me. There were only two of them, but 2000m? That's... kind of a lot. All at once. However, just two of them? I could totally handle it. I figured I'd shoot for 11:15 or so for the first one, and then take it from there. I went out, I ran hard, but I didn't kill myself, and finished the first 2000 in 10:48. All righty then. Not so much 11:15, but, whatever. Better faster than slower, right? I pushed the second one a little harder, and finished in 10:39, which... rock on. I'm not quite sure how I managed that, but I'll take it.

We had a few minutes to recover, and then we ended the workout with 4x400. The 2000s were tough, but these were another beast all together. I figured I'd be happy with keeping all 4 of them right around 2:00. I finished the first one in 1:57, and, man, that was just rough. I thought there was no freaking way I was going to be able to keep the next 3 at that pace, never mind get faster. I went out at what felt like a similar effort for the 2nd one, and came in at 1:52. Awesome, although I wasn't sure about finishing two more. I started the third one a little easy, but picked it up at the end for a 1:53.

Then I got a wild idea - could I finish my last one in 1:45? I was tired, it was horribly humid out, but, hey, no guts no glory, right? Besides, it was the last one, so it didn't matter if I left it all out there. I took off like a shot, intent on catching one of the guys that was running just ahead of me. I was tired. I was feeling the effort, and, around the 300m mark "feeling the effort" turned into "feeling like I was about to toss my cookies." I backed off a bit, but still finished strong. I didn't hit 1:45 like I'd wanted to, but I came close with a 1:47.

It wasn't until I was jogging my cool-down laps that I did the math. A 1:45 quarter works out to a 7:00 pace.

Excuse me? 7:00 pace? I believe that falls under the category of "faster than I have any business running." If I'd done the math before that last 400, I never would have gone for it like I did, because, seriously, that's ridiculous. 7:00? That's for, like, fast people. Not me.

Except... well... a few months ago, I thought an 8:40 pace was faster than I had any business running, and that was pretty much the pace I ran the 2000s at, with enough left in the tank to kick out those 400s. Maybe someday, a 7:00 pace won't seem quite so ridiculous. At any rate, after a full summer of this? I should be able to run one hell of a 5K.

Posted by Dawn at May 11, 2006 10:51 AM

Comments

Posted by: Heath at May 11, 2006 11:30 AM

Posted by: Jay T at May 11, 2006 12:43 PM