The Road To Lyon Is Bathed In Sweat

Prior to my achilles injury in 09 I could routinely go to the track and summon up 4x1 mile repeats in sub 5 mins but old age and a few seasons of illness and injury mean those "highlight reels" of my glory years are a distant memory of what I could once do,that said I doggedly kept 4x1mile repeats in my rotation as a "bread and butter" repeat untill today.
As early as a year ago I began to notice a pattern on the mile repeats,good opening lap,a dip over the next two laps followed by a strong closing 400m,w/ the emphasis on 4 solid laps I elected to "tweak" said workout,how about 4x400m x 4?
The method to my madness is I have a specific number in my mind for my opening 300m and subsequent three 400s for my 1,500s in Jacksonville and Lyon,I'm not going to come out and say what those splits are here and now 8 and 11 weeks out from Nationals & Worlds but believe me when I say post Nationals and Worlds I'll go "full disclosure" anywho to aid and abet that it was out w/ the 4x1 mile and in w/ the 4x400x4.

I arrived at Harverford at 1pm it was already a warm one but like I said on Monday dealing w/ the heat is all part of the build up to Jacksonville & Lyon,to quote the time honoured Juma Ikanga quote"the will to win means nothing w/out the will to prepare"
Mile warm up taken care of it was out of the running shoes and into the racing flats.....plus given this was my debut of this repeat a little "out of the frying pan into the fire" maybe?
As an guideline I picked 70-75 as my target splits time would tell{no pun intended} how acurate or wishful thinking that was.
4x400m w/ 60 second recoveries and 5 mins between sets

#1 4x400m
70.85
72.92
71.56
71.91
After feeling my oates on the opener I settled into a nice rhythm.......could I stay there???

#2 4x400m
72.15
72.57
72.76
72.95
Get "Mr Consistancy" w a metronomic 72 second per 400m....the question was did I have 2 more sets in me?

#3 4x400m
76.08
74.93
74.76
74.68
Having laid on the track w/ my feet up on a steplechase barrier to try and drain the lactic acid out of my legs between sets 2 and 3 I began slowly but said "fuck no I ain't mailing it in!!!

#4 4x400m
77.34
74.33
75.20
72.16
Again a slow reaction coming off the line on the series opener but again a good reaction,loving the 72.16 finish like a two dollar hooker.........

All in all a good workout,a pesky 800m race on June 20th means it'll be June 27th b4 I tackle this bad boy again but hopefully that extra week is worth a second here and there,maybe lose those 75,76,77 splits?
To put some prespective on things even at 1.17 on the opening 400m of #4 I was still faster than my slowest 400m in a 4x1mile repeat going back to Jan 28th my slowest split was 1.27 on lap 2 of #3 and #4 ans even taking the opening 70.85 off the table those 72s were faster than my fastest 400m that day which happened to be the opening 400m of #1 in 73 seconds..........

One final spin collectivly my mile splits today were:
4.47.24
4.50.43
5.00.45
4.49.03
On Jan 28th I went
5.23.35
5.26.58
5.31.57
5.28.32
The gotee maybe getting grayer,I may even be getting longer in the tooth......but Goddamn it if you can't teach this old dog new tricks.......we march forward towards Jacksonville and Lyon......