St. Patty's Day Shape Cutting

AM: 4 miles
PM: 10 mins. active stretching
2 mile w/u + strides
Target: 16x400 @80-82 cut down to 75 w/1 min. rest
Actual: 81, 81, 81, 81, 79, 78, 78, 78, 78, 77, 77, 77, 75, 76, 75, 70
2 mile c/d
Total: 8 miles

After several days of cold and dreary weather, we were treated with a gorgeous spring afternoon for today's workout. It seems like our last three or four track workouts have taken place in similar conditions, and it continues to make me happy. If I had one complaint (which, let's be honest, of course I do) it would be that the wind was quite brisk on the backstretch. Like, really brisk. Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, we can talk about the workout itself.

So, basically this went really well, both in terms of times and feel. It wasn't until #12 or 13 that I truly started feeling fatigued; I also noticed at that point that my breathing was pretty ragged during the rest periods, whereas I'd been able to carry on a conversation previously. I really tried to open up my legs on the last one, but it seems that I just can't break 70 seconds no matter what the bribe/enticement is for doing so. Good grief. Um, seventh grade called; it wants its mile relay split back. At any rate, I felt very strong and controlled throughout, and was pleasantly surprised when Jeff complimented me on how much my form has improved. That probably says more about how my form was before than how it is now, but I choose to see it as a compliment.

Looking back on some of my recent shape cutting sessions, my progression is pretty solid. I ran much faster than on the 25x400 last month, which is to be expected, but keep in mind that I also had one lap jog after every five intervals during that workout; today the rest was 60 seconds throughout. Looking a bit further back, almost two months ago to the day I did 12x400 in 78-79 average. Today the average was a bit faster for more intervals, which is definitely what we want to see.

I always say this after track workouts, but I am going to be extremely sore tomorrow. Yay.