12x400 at JCSU

2.5 mile w/u + strides
Target: 12x400m @75 or faster w/400m jog
Actual: 12x400m w/200m jog
75, 75, 75, 79, 74, 74, 73, 73, 71, 74, 73, 72
3 mile c/d
Total: 10 miles

There are few prospects less appealing to me than waking up at 5:30am to almost immediately begin sprinting around the track. (For reference, I'd put it somewhere between, say, attending a Star Wars convention and sitting front row at a Justin Bieber concert.) Fortunately, knowing I'd be sharing the oval with Caitlin, Billy, Eric and even potentially the Paul and Spada show made dragging my body out of bed slightly more bearable. I'd gone to sleep thinking the plan was 16x400 with 60 seconds rest, which seemed daunting. I awoke to a text from Mark Hadley via Caitlin saying that the workout actually only called for 12 repeats at 75 seconds or faster with a 400 meter jog. While the idea of running fewer intervals was obviously welcomed with open arms (feet?), I knew that running faster would prove challenging. Despite that, I was also not thrilled about the longer rest; 400 meters might not seem like a lot, but when you're moving at a snail's pace between every interval it could potentially draw out the workout much longer than any of us would like. Fortunately upon arriving at Caitlin's I learned that she was on the same page, so we agreed to up the ante and try to hit the same splits with only half the rest. We're crazy like that.

All in all, the workout went quite well, especially considering my current mileage volume. A quick snapshot of the past seven days, beginning with last Wednesday, looks something like this: 12, 18 (14/4 double), 14 (9/5), 12 (w/workout), 12 (hilly trails), 12. Well-rested I am not. With that said, I was surprised to be able to lock into 75-second pace right out of the gate. It normally takes my old grandma legs three or four jolting laps to find the proper tempo, but today they snapped right into the pace. Except for the noticeable 79-second outlier for #4--during which I inadvertently chastised the boys for taking the first 100 out too fast, causing them to apply the brakes a bit too liberally for the remaining 300--every single interval was at or below target pace. (Speaking of outliers, that 71 for #9 accidentally happened after we took a few extra seconds of rest to guzzle down some precious agua. Guess it really perked us up.) Our 200-meter jog was consistently at 75-80 seconds, more than the minute I always took when cutting shapes under Simmons' tutelage but far less than the 2:00-2:30 that Mark had prescribed, and up until the last few intervals I felt like it was perfectly adequate. My underlying fatigue finally showed through on the 12th and final lap, when Caitlin and the boys ran away from me like I was standing still, but otherwise I couldn't really ask my body for more than it offered today. If I can make it through the next few weeks of high mileage, I just might end up pretty darn fit!