Great track workout tonight with the JSRC. The temperatures were in the low 80s this afternoon, which easily makes this the warmest track day so far in 2012.
I got to Vanderbilt about an hour early and ran an easy 5.5-mile warmup around campus and on the track. My legs are still fairly sore from doing P90X: Legs and Back on Tuesday, so the extra warmup really helped loosen up my muscles.
The actual workout was 4 x 1600m (1-mile) repeats with 400m recovery. Our instructions were to run the intervals at marathon pace. Since my only upcoming spring marathon is as the 4-hour pacer in the Country Music Marathon, I asked John (our coach) if I could run the intervals at goal half marathon pace instead. I am running in the Oak Barrel Half Marathon a week from Saturday, and was actually hoping for mile repeats so I could practice my half marathon pace. He said that would be ok, so I was shooting for something between 6:40 and 6:50. I ended up running all of the repeats with Sue Anne and Nathan, and we completed the four intervals in 6:40, 6:42, 6:38, and 6:37. These were a little faster than my target but (1) I felt really good (2) The pace was consistent. I was actually really pleased with how well I felt considering the higher temps and the fact that I did a 5.5-mile warmup. I never felt winded and could have run more repeats at the end. In total I completed 11.5-miles with warmup and cooldown.
After the workout, John advised me (he is also my personal coach) to take tomorrow off since I already have almost 40 miles completed this week. I had been hoping to get in 60+ miles total for the week, but he told me to be more conservative in ramping up my mileage to hopefully avoid injury. This makes a lot of sense, and I’m glad that I have someone to give me feedback. So, I’m going to enjoy my unexpected rest day tomorrow and then get back to work on Saturday morning.
Beast Mode…ON!