400’s and secret workouts
I learned two things last night at the track:
- 12×400’s with 1:30 rest intervals feel like cake compared with 12×800’s with 1:30 intervals! I felt way better about these than I’ve ever felt about the 800’s and finally was able to kick out my last repeat as the fastest of my workout. With the 800’s I’d always had a mediocre or slower time on the last repeat, but last night on the final repeat I took about 7 seconds off my best, which was awesome. New experience, though: my triceps felt really sore on the recovery run home. I think I was probably doing something right by using my arms to increase my performance but those muscles were not used to being used that way at all.
- I finally get why a lot of the top runners’ track progress hs been moving up faster than mine. They’re probably just better runners and in better shape, but they also have different running schedules. I moved up to the advanced program a month and a half ago but that still just has me doing hills or varied pace or something on Thursdays when they’re actually doing mile repeats or other strength exercises. I didn’t understand this but the coach finally fessed up to it last night. I should look back on this fondly because I don’t expect to grow closer to the track workouts.