Today marked my 6th consecutive day to get in a training run, and I can’t remember the last time that has happened. I’m guessing it has been well over a year, if not much longer. Many of these runs have been fairly crummy (Sat, Sun, & Mon specifically), but tonight’s “speed” workout was BY FAR the best I’ve felt during those 6-days.
I met my normal track group tonight at Vanderbilt, but instead of joining their workout I did the week 1 “speed” workout prescribed in the Hansons Advanced Training Plan. This was 12 x 400m with 400m recovery in-between each interval. This equates to 3-miles of intervals and 3-miles of recovery. Based on my goal marathon time of 3:15, the target splits for this workout are 1:38. While, this is the goal, the Hanson brothers really emphasize not exceeding your target pace, and even make their athletes do sets of push-ups for every second they exceed their goal.
While this split target is not terribly aggressive, and is actually much slower than I was running 400m last week, the humidity tonight made it a bit of a challenge. We’ve had storms move through Middle Tennessee over the past 24-hours, and while this resulted in slightly lower temps, it also left some nice soupy humidity behind. Don’t get me wrong, it was already crazy humid before, but tonight was especially thick.
Anyway, I felt pretty good from the start, and this got even better as the workout progressed. My legs started out a bit tight but felt awesome by the middle of the workout. Normally at track we will take a few seconds break after each recovery to grab a drink and get back to the line for the next interval. Tonight I decided to break the 12 repeats into 4 sets of 3, and do each set continuous, without breaks. While, this was a lot of hard work, it turned out great. All of my intervals were between 1:38 and 1:42, and while some of these were up to 4-seconds slower than the target, I feel pretty good about the effort considering the humidity. Here is a rundown of my night:
Warmup
- 1.54-miles easy
- 6 x 100m Stride Outs
Set 1
- 400m fresh (1:41) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:42) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:42) / 400m recovery
Set 2
- 400m fresh (1:38) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:40) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:38) / 400m recovery
Set 3
- 400m fresh (1:41) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:39) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:41) / 400m recovery
Set 4
- 400m fresh (1:40) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:41) / 400m recovery
- 400m fresh (1:40) / 400m recovery
Cool Down
- .25-miles easy
So, all told I got just over 8.3-miles of work, and I was absolutely drenched with sweat by the end. As my friend Edward says, “I’m sure it is possible to be more wet, but it would require a shower.” Tomorrow is my only planned “off” day of the week, before 6-miles at easy pace on Saturday. This plan is really going to get interesting once “tempo” runs start next Saturday.
In addition to the run, I also got in the following cross-training exercises:
- Three-Way Lunge (5 x 3 reps each leg)
- Chair Salutations (30 sec x 2)
- Reverse-Grip Chinup (8 reps)
- Toe-Roll Iso Lunges (20 each leg)
- Groucho Walk (45 sec)
- Wide-Front Pull-Up (8 reps)
- Calf Raises (3 x 25)
- Monster Walk (25 each leg)
- Switch-Grip Pull-Ups (8 reps)
- Wall Squat w Ball (1 min)
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Tonight’s Workout VINYL: No More Hell to Pay by Stryper |
“I dare you to train for a marathon, and not have it change your life.”
-Susan Sidoriak