Last night I made a personal #verbal that I would get up and start a track workout before 5:30am, and I rolled out of bed at 4:45 true to my word. A #verbal is something that can’t be broken so I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Last night however I didn’t sleep well after planning the workout. I haven’t run a track workout since 2006 when I was a junior in highschool so I was kind of nervous, just knowing I would be pushing myself hard tomorrow made it difficult to relax. It was kind of like having race day jitters.
Lonely Subaru
I decided to start early this morning before it got too hot, but was surprised at how light it was outside even at 5am. I arrived at the local high school track, the same track I used to run on when I was a student. I was the only car in the lot at that hour and the sun had just started to come up over the trees. It was honestly pretty inspiring and I was already feeling nostalgic so I snapped a few phone pics before starting the workout.
I found this workout from an old Runner’s World article and changed only the rest periods slightly. I spent a few minutes using the Cooling Running Pace Calculator to figure out my splits (5k pace) and wrote out my plan on a file card:
- 2 lap warm up jog
- 1.5 miles 30 sec slower than race pace: 6 laps at 1:43
- 2-3 min recovery
- 1 mile at race pace: 4 laps at 1:35
- 2-3 min recovery
- 800 meters at reach pace: 2 laps at 1:30
- 1 min recovery
- 2×200 meter sprints w/ 15-20 seconds rest between
- 2 laps cool down jog
Sun Just coming up
The workout went great and I actually ran most splits a little faster than what I had written down. This brought up two thoughts. First perhaps I’m in better race shape and mentally I’m limiting myself on race days. Also I need to continue running for pace so that I can better learn my pacing. In high school I felt pretty confident I could tell you at what min per mile pace I was running at most times. Now I definitely feel lost without my watch/mile markers. In the end I had a lot of fun and didn’t feel like death after. I’m hoping doing more track/tempo runs can help me improve my speed a bit near the end of races because right now I feel like a slug trying to kick at the end.
The End
StarvingRunner 