Monday, August 26, 2013

In Search And In Praise Of Old Glory

You all know I'm the poster child for all things ironic so it should come as no great surprise that on Saturday I celebrated my 20th anniversary of becoming a US citizen by hitting the track and doing my best Nick Symmonds.....and trying to rock the shit out of an 800m repeat workout!!!
I'd come up w/ the 8x300x200x300m repeat last year after outdoor nationals but only put it into use once in September w/ reasonable results
53.0-36.8-58.0
55.1-37.8-56.2
57.6-37.0-54.2
56.2-37.7-57.2
56.2-38.6-54.7
58.2-38.4-58.3
60.0-38.9-58.3
53.3-37.2-53.6
Reasonable but not earthshattering,I went into Saturdays crack at this using 55-35-55 as my bench mark a reachable target for starters but one I'd like to see lower over the coming months as this particular repeat will become one of my four go to repeats along side the time tested 4x1 mile,5x1,000m and the always fun
6x600m repeat
Conditions were ideal by the time I arrived at Temple's track at 10.48am,sunny warm and next to no wind on the back straight which would be pivitol given the nature of this repeats w/ 16 300s and 8 200s
I could (hopefully) be forgiven for being a tad snakebitten after last Saturdays less than steller 5x1,000m repeats although I'll go out on a limb and say Wednesdays bonk where my legs folded like a house of cards was probably an indiction that my legs were not upto 6 day 50 mile weeks just yet so w/ an extra rest day and 8 less miles on my legs today I felt reasonably confident of a good interval session....
54.0-33.8-54.3
52.7-34.3-54.8
55.1-35.8-55.9
56.5-36.8-56.7
57.6-36.5-55.2
55.7-35.7-56.2
55.6-36.6-57.3
56.0-37.2-54.7
Overall I'm quite pleased it's not an easy workout and there was a method to my madness leaving it to week #3 of intervals as this was my first crack at shorter repeats after mile and 1,000m repeats the last two weeks.
I did wear my flats for these repeats which at the time seemed like a good idea but given the soreness in my calves two days later I'm left to ponder if that was such a good move,while not up on my toes the entire workout I did notice a couple of times I was returning to full blown "repeat mode" which bodes well moving forward.
When I revisit this repeat on Sept 28th I hope to eliminate the 57 second 300s and 36 second 200s and maybe the 36 second 300s also

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