Workout

Dan and I hit the Dome on Tuesday for the fourth workout in the ten week series.  I was feeling beat from a weekend with two snowshoe races along with lingering bronchitis and a very sore hip.  Dan noted that he was “feeling flat” after a weekend of no running.  This would be our longest workout thus far, but the pace would be ‘reasonable’.  The goal was to run 8 x 800m at 10k pace with 400+ rest.  The rest is always odd at the Dome due to the unusual length of the track.  Dan called our goal pace “optimistic 10k pace” or something like that.

We hit the track and did 3 miles warm-up and another mile with strides.  I felt pretty terrible, flat, tired and sore.  We alternated leading the 800’s and it actually went pretty well.  We hit them all between 2:40 – 2:42, depending on traffic on the track.  Mostly the effort felt okay, the first lap always felt easy and the last 1.5 laps was never terrible.  The longish (2:20) recovery made it seem easy, well maybe easy is pushing it.  After the workout we changed out of flats and did another 2 miles warm-down for a total of 11 miles in the Dome.

I felt okay but if asked to run a second or two faster I doubt I could have.  I’m not sure if that is a bad sign as I’m hoping to run 80 second pace for the 5,000 this weekend.  Maybe a few easy days will help me bounce back?

800’s                 Rest

2:41.0               2:24

2:41.1               2:25

2:41.3               2:22

2:41.8               2:47 (stopped to re-tie my shoe)

2:40.3               2:27

2:41.1               2:30

2:42.4               2:29

2:41.6               2:55 (extra to switch into trainers)