I was a bit nervous about what the track workout tonight would bring. Having not run much over the past three weeks, the prospect of running a workout, let alone running this workout was a bit daunting. Somehow though, I think it was the excitement of getting to run on a track, timing myself, and running with a whole bunch of fun people, I managed to get myself to the workout (and on-time, no less!) and actually turn in a pretty good performance. The workout was a four mile lydiard at half marathon pace, mind you, after this workout, I’m not really all that certain that I could run this pace for 13.1 miles, but I’ll deal with that if that challenge should ever arise!
Anyhow, we started out running in a group of about five or six people who were all aiming to hit the same splits. We were going for 7:08 miles (1:47 per lap). Throughout the entire workout we ran incredibly even splits, I was very proud of us! For the first mile we hit 7:05 coming through each four hundred in 1:46, 1:47, 1:46, 1:45. The second mile we came through in 7:03 (14:08 for two miles) with four hundred splits of 1:45, 1:46, 1:45, 1:45. We ran the third mile in 7:03 also, with 400 splits of 1:46, 1:46, 1:45, 1:45 which put us through three miles in 21:11. At the beginning of the workout I had told myself that I may stop after three miles what with not having trained much recently. However, at about two and a half miles I decided that I’d probably stick it out and do the full workout. The pace was fine and I wasn’t really feeling all that taxed as of yet, actually I felt pretty darn good! I wanted to push myself a bit more, so four miles it was! I’m really glad I hung around for that last mile too because as I was running I began feeling the tiredness start to slowly creep up on me and it was great to have the opportunity to push myself through that, especially while having the support of so many other people running with me! We maintained our even splits throughout the entirety of the fourth mile (another reason why I’m glad I decided not to whimp out and to do the whole thing!) running an even 7:00. Our 400 splits for this last mile were 1:44, 1:46, 1:45, 1:43, still pretty even! for a total time of 28:11. When all was said and done, I was certainly a bit tired and as I mentioned before, I’m not sure that I could maintain this pace for an entire half-marathon, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!
It was definitely great having so many people all around me and running with me for the entirety of that workout. It would have been a completely different story had I been running that by myself. I am pretty sure that I would have decided to stop at three miles. So, yahoo for training buddies and yahoo for good workouts!
