Outdoor Track Comes to a Close

Last night was our final outdoor track workout of the season. In Gate City Striders tradition, we had our 4-person night relay race. The track is lined with candle luminaries and relay batons become glow sticks. Teams are chosen at random and each person runs 400m (4 times).
I had recovered well from my marathon on Sunday, mountain biking Monday and Tuesday and running 5 miles prior to track. Legs were still a little tired but I figured I could run easy and just have fun. Yeah, right.

Joe R would lead off, followed by Lee, myself and anchored by Keith O. For most of the 4 mile relay we had a good battle going with dysfunctional team of Michael Wade and friends (I'm pretty sure no one on his team ran a marathon...slowly, this weekend). In the end, we finished in 2nd, just a few seconds back. This supposedly fun workout turned out to be much harder than I thought and I was a hurtin' pup at the end.

My laps were: 70s, 74s, 74s and 74s and we finished up with a total time of 21:53. In retrospect, I would not recommend speed work 3 days after a marathon.

Indoor track starts January 4th!

Quality workout = tired legs

I'll admit it, I tend to whine a bit whenever the repeats are greater than 800m (just ask Mike W). For some strange reason I just don't like running at max heart rate for more than a couple of minutes. I'm an endurance guy, not a speed guy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On Wednesday I took my complaints to the track and did the workout anyways, to the joy of Mike Wade, Mike Wright and Jim Hansen I'm sure. For the most part we all ran the workout together, pushing and pulling each other along the way. Definitely easier to do a workout like this with a group.

The workout:
3200m @ 10k pace
800 rest
1600m @ 10k pace
400m rest
1200m @ 10k pace
400m rest
800m @ 10k pace
200m rest
400m @ 10k pace
200m rest
400m @ 10k pace

The result:
3200m @ 6:13 pace
1600m @ 6:01 pace
1200m @ 5:57 pace
800m @ 5:55 pace
400m @ 5:26 pace
400m @ 5:22 pace

Sometimes I wonder when we do a track workout if it has any purpose or is the coach just trying to kill us for his personal amusement. Tonight it clicked. The workout seemed to have a purpose and talking with Coach Jim after the workout confirmed it. The purpose was to simulate race conditions, start out a little more controlled (not slow) and slowly increase the pace, finishing strong (and tired) at the end. The result is much more satisfying than going out like a flash and limping in at the end.

Although tough, it was a quality workout. Unfortunately my recoveries are not as fast as they used to be. I attempted a 9 mile run last night. My legs were tired, sore, fatigued and a slew of other adjectives so I cut my run short (3.2 miles) and headed for home. Another day.

Aging Up and Track

Yesterday was my birthday, and as someone mentioned to me yesterday, "you're not getting older, you're aging up!". Although still a masters, I've now moved into the 45-49 age group. Of course most races don't have a 45-49 category but if they do, I'll be ready!

GCS had their weekly track workout last night. The attendance this year has been amazing (at least to me). They've always had a decent turnout but this year is different. It's almost crowded on the track and can feel like running through the mall at times. By now, most are aware of basic track etiquette so it's generally not a problem.

The large crowd is divided into 5 groups (I think) of differing abilities (group 1 is the fastest). For the past couple of weeks I've been running with group 2 but decided to see if I could hang with the big boys in group 1 this week. The workout would be 10 x 400m repeats with 200m rest. My plan was to run 85 sec laps.

Lap 1 - 80 sec, trailing the group by a few seconds, way too fast, I think I may die.
Lap 2 - 82 sec, see lap one

Ok, so maybe I'm not ready for group 1 yet. I gathered my pride and headed over to the pedestrian-like group 2. Just kidding! This group of unnamed fast masters (mostly) were running 88 sec and 90 sec laps when I joined up. They are actually a really good group to run with and most of the 10+ runners stay pretty tightly packed. I tried to convince them to run a little faster ( as I was hoping for 85 sec repeats) but they would have none of it and was almost kicked out of the group before I even started.
The splits below are from my watch. Our coach was yelling out slightly different (aka faster) times and some in the group panicked and made me run in lane 4 couple of times in order to slow me down a bit (slightly longer laps). Trust me, this group knows when it's running off pace and they're not afraid to let you know! In the end I tried to pace them as consistently as I could and made sure the group was sticking together as much as possible. With a 15k race on Saturday, it was probably a good thing I wasn't able to run 85 sec laps.

Remaining Splits:
Lap 3 - 88 sec
Lap 4 - 88 sec
Lap 5 - 88 sec
Lap 6 - 88 sec
Lap 7 - 89 sec
Lap 8 - 88 sec
Lap 9 - 88 sec
Lap 10 - 86 sec

After the workout Mike Wade gave me with a nice Elmo birthday hat (that said "I'm 45 Today") and the group sang Happy Birthday. Ahh, wasn't that nice? I even wore my hat on my cool down run.

Track Workout

I decided to try my luck at the weekly GCS track workout last night. Although I've only been running again for about a week I thought the workout was manageable, 4 x 1 mile repeats with 800m rest. I settled in with the second group, most of whom I guessed would be running between 6:00 and 6:30 pace.

I let others in the group pace the first mile and stayed tucked in the middle but I thought it felt a little slow and a little erratic so I decided to pace the group on the remaining miles, keeping each 400m split in the 1:30 to 1:32 range. Once I get dialed in I can generally run pretty consistent, repeatable laps.

Splits for the workout:
Mile 1 6:20
Mile 2 6:08
Mile 3 6:04
Mile 4 6:00

Effort wise it felt comfortably hard but this was obviously the fastest my legs moved in a very long time so my legs were pretty sore by the 4th mile repeat. So with a couple of miles for a warm up and a couple more for a cool down I ended up with 9+ miles for the day. Probably more than I should have so today is what I refer to as a grow day. No running for me.

Indoor Track is Done

We finished up the 12 week coached indoor track session at the Hampshire Dome last night. When it started back on 12/9 I felt I was running pretty well, having a fairly successful fall racing season. Our first workout back in December consisted of 10 x 400m repeats with 200m rest and I averaged 1:23 per lap (5:34 pace). 10 weeks later we did the same workout (10 x 400's) but this time I averaged 1:19 per lap (5:17 pace). So am I a believer in speed work? I am now. When you see the results from the hard work how can you not see the value?

7 weeks until outdoor track!