In the email our Coach sent us about Wednesday night's track workout she told us to pretend we running a race. Do all our normal pre-race things and think about our race strategy. Many of us are running the Four on the Fourth four mile race on Monday so we were prepping for that. In addition to our usual warm-up stretches I did a 1.25 mile jogging warm-up with a few speedy parts at the end. Pretty much what I like to do before any race.
The goal of the workout was to focus on "switching gears". Running comfortable and then picking it up. We did 1200 meters (three times around the track) and moved right into 800 meters (no break). The 1200 meters were supposed to be at 4 mile pace and the 800 was supposed to be at 5K pace.
I'm not entirely sure how fast I can run 4 miles. I know that my 5K PR pace is 8:00 minute miles. My 3.5 mile PR pace is 8:02 minutes per mile. I ran the Four on the Fourth last year but bonked hard so my current 4 mile race pace is 8:41.
The McMillan Pace Calculator thinks that based on my 5K PR I should be able to run 4 miles at an 8:09 pace. I'd be happy with an 8:15. So that was my goal for the first part of Wednesday's workout.
Except I totally failed at Garmin. I can tell you I did my first mile in 7:53 but beyond that I'm not sure. So, basically, I also failed at pacing. I'm so bad at this! I'm going to have to try REALLY hard on Monday not to go out too fast at the start of the race.
After the 2000 meters we moved on to 3x200 meters with 200 meters of jogging in between. I ran this pretty fast, clocking in between 45 and 50 seconds for each of them. Again, Garmin fail. The third one was kind of rough and I probably should have stopped at 2. Of course, I didn't realize that until 100 meters in.
Overall it was a good workout. Did I learn what I was supposed to learn? Well, I did focus on trying to push through even when tired. And I learned I'm still bad at starting slow. So I think as long as I keep those two things in mind on Monday I'll be good. Now, it's just too bad the race doesn't start at 7:15 PM instead of of 7:15 AM....
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