Sunday, December 20, 2015

Making strides on the track

Part one of today's workout
Today's run (track): 4 miles plus 4 x 200s

My legs exploded off the line, firing my fast twitch muscles and propelling me 200 meters at breakneck speed. That was the experience I was hoping for, but not quite my reality. My plan this morning was to do some speed work so I headed over to the high school to run measured intervals. I did get in some repeats, but most of my workout was track mileage.

When I arrived at the school I was excited to see that I had the place to myself. I decided to take advantage of the clear lanes and do a two mile warm-up before switching to strides. The flat track helped my performance and provided me a half minute per mile improvement over yesterday's pace. I wore my new buff around my neck and pulled it over my head when I encountered strong winds.

The track doesn't provide a lot of visual stimulation, but I liked watching the bright sun coming up over the horizon while I made my way around. I decided to keep running after I'd covered my first two miles and ended up doing a full four before moving over to speed work.

I only ended up doing 4 x 200s with 30 second recoveries, averaging 59 seconds per repeat. Not exactly explosive speed, but I haven't done anaerobic training in a long time. Still, it worked out to 8:00 per mile, a pace I haven't seen for months. If I could sustain that speed for more than 200 meters, I'd be pretty happy. The answer is clearly more intervals, more often,

6 comments:

  1. I envy your snow free track! Mine is covered with snow and I won't be doing intervals outside until spring. But I will be skiing every day ; )

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I got snowshoes recently and I really want to try them if it ever snows!!! I think that would be a great cross training workout.

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. I know, I know. I'm going to try to do another speed workout this week since I'll be home most of the week. I can't bring myself to do repeats on the treadmill.

      Delete
    2. Maybe you'd get over your disdain for the treadmill if you did some intervals or hill workouts on it. Time goes by much faster on the treadmill when doing quality runs on it rather than just trudging along. Its especially good for hills.

      Delete
    3. That is a good idea because I'm especially bad for hills :-) I'll do an interval session on the treadmill to see if it works for me. I've been avoiding doing that because my last speed session on a treadmill aggravated my herniated disc so bad I couldn't run for three weeks.

      Delete

Comments will appear only after passing review. Any comments that promote or link to commercial products will be rejected.

 

blogger templates | Webtalks