Tuesday Track Workout (8.0mi)

I continue to be amazed at home many different variations of track workouts you can do. Tonight we ran I guess what's often referred to as "running 400's", which basically just means you are running some # of sets of 400m repeats, with a brief rest/recovery in between, in our case, 1 minute. We were to do 20 sets of this total. So you run 2 laps (in our case - 200m track) at threshold, and then a slower 1 minute recovery, and repeat. Once you've done 4 sets (1600m ~ 1mile), we also got a longer full 2 lap recovery period. I quickly made the decision to adapt a very systematic approach to this, such that I would try to slowly increase my pace for each set of 4, or every mile, by 2s per lap. So I ran my first 4 sets at a 50s/lap (1:40 per set) pace, and then my next 4 at 48s, working down such that my last mile would be at a 42s/lap pace (1:24/set - 5:36/mile) pace. Keep in mind there are rest periods in between, but still, I felt pretty good at being able to accomplish this. I was glad to be done running when I finished, but I definitely still had more in the tank if I needed it, so I felt pretty good overall. Another great track workout.