Week 9 - Day 3

I had a good workout today! I missed my Monday weights workout, so instead of taking Tuesday off, I ended up going Tues - Wed - Thurs with weights - plyo - track workouts. I did a light workout on Wednesday (including a few makeshift harness runs...to be explained later) but my legs were sore both last night and today, which I was a little concerned about. The workout today was 500m-400m-300m...with a catch: the time it took to run the full distance of each rep was not that important. Instead, I was supposed to key in on running a full speed 400m-300m-200m and just keep my legs moving for another 100m after each. I didn't even track the time for the full distance. I only cared about the full speed part.

Rest: full recovery (>10 minutes)
Format: rep - distance - target time (s) - actual time (s)

1 - 400m (+untimed 100m) - 58 - 56.4*^
2 - 300m (+untimed 100m) - 41 - 41 flat
3 - 200m (+untimed 100m) - 26 - 26.5
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I was very happy with these times. As you can see, though, the 400m time had a couple caveats:
*I was so focused on running a fast 400m that I completely forgot to run out the following 100m. My forgetfulness may have been partly due to:

^extreme anger at the high school lacrosse players who decided to start warming up across half the track as I came down the backstretch; I said "Track!" at around the 350m mark, which I think they heard, but they were very slow getting out of the way. I then said "Clear the lane," but one dude decided to go renegade and made only a minimal effort to move. I ended up having to both slow down a little and turn my shoulders completely sideways to get around this dude and finish out the last 20m. I'd be lying if I didn't say I briefly thought about completely bowling him over. All this is to say: I lost some time and I was very unhappy about it. My guess is this time should have been at, or just under, a 56 flat, but shoulda-coulda-woulda...it's a 56.4.

My friend Ken from work joined me today, and Ken, Kenny, and Brooke all joined me yesterday. I must say it's very nice working out with other folks. Ken and I staggered our starts today and helped each other down the backstretches. He really helped me down the last 100m of my opening 400 in particular. I would have been much closer to 60s without his help, so thanks to him.

Today was a good day. One of the goals I laid out for myself last year was to break 60s running a 400m in training and I never got there. Running in spikes this year has definitely helped (I barely used spikes last year), but I'm still excited to have broken that personal barrier...with a little help from my friends.