Track workout (8.0mi)

So every Tuesday night for the past few weeks, Jack Fultz, the winner of the 1976 Boston Marathon and trainer/coach for my DFMC team, has been hosting these track workouts at the indoor track facility at the Tufts University campus over in Medford. I've been trying to make it to one since that time but tonight was the first time I was actually able to. So having never been involved in any running sports in my HS/College days, my track experience is thus extremely very limited. I've been to a couple of different tracks at various points over the past few years, to do different types of running drills, etc, but they've all been completely on my own, either of my own accord or once in a great while perhaps with some friends. So since I've never really done any official track workouts, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.

After getting to the facility and doing a little bit of stretching and warming up, Jack arrived and gave us the run down of what tonight's workout would entail. The indoor track at Tufts is a 200m track, which means it takes roughly 8 laps to have run approx. 1mi. As Jack later explained to me, each week we will be doing a different type of workout, but tonight we were to do 6-8 sets, of 8 laps around the track. For each "set" of 8 laps, the breakdown would be to run 4 laps at your anaerobic threshold, meaning a faster pace than your normal training pace, but not your maximum. Then you do 1 rest/recovery lap, at a slower (but "keep it modest!" as Jack said) pace, and then 1 "fast" lap, followed by 2 more rest/recovery laps, and repeat. Each "set" is typically referred to as having run a "1000", since you will have "run" a 1000m during that set (5 running laps - the 3 recovery are NOT included in this reference).

I had decided when I left work NOT to bring my GPS watch with me, since as we were going to be running indoors, I figured it would be moot, since it cannot acquire a satellite signal inside. I realized however that this was a mistake, because since there are so many of us, even tho Jack has a few stop watches and is randomly timing people, I am entirely at his discretion to know what pace I am running at, which makes maintaining pace slightly more difficult. Once we started tho, I found I was able to settle into a very nice groove, and not having the watch wasn't really such a big deal. I'll def bring it with me next week, but by utilizing Jack, I was still able to keep a pretty good idea of what pace I was maintaining. After the first set or so, I found I settled into a nice even pace, and didn't really start to feel much fatigue until my 6th "set" or so. For my 8th and final "set", I still had enough left to do my "fast" 200m lap in 35s, which would work out to be a 4:40min/mi pace, which I was very happy about. I felt really good throughout, and still had enough energy at the end to keep going if I needed to.

I was definitely a fan of these track workouts, and am really hoping I'll be able to continue to make it to them on a routine basis. I'm also hoping I'll be able to convince a few friends to come along with me, as these workouts are NOT exclusively for Dana Farber team members. It was a lot of fun, and I found that even though I run with other teammates during the Thursday night crossroad runs, as well as any group runs I attend, being on a closed loop course, you are interacting much closer, and much more frequently with everyone, which I found particularly nice.