New approach

Very warm and a little humid at 4:15pm at the Sewanee track.   84º, heat index 87ish.   I'm taking a different approach this week.   I'm not going to do any crushing tempo or over distance this week before my penultimate meet of the season on Sat. in FL.  I'm going to prepare to race the 400m, by running fast 400s.  My friend Trevor from Australia told me he did something like this.  He is one of the very few M60 guys to break 56, so it worked for him.  Plus, I'm going to add a small amount of resistance daily, dumbell squats and bands.  It's low volume, good quality, and tolerable to do on consecutive days.

You'd think racing 400s would be good training but it's not.  When racing, I tend to take risks thinking I can go out really fast and bring it home.  This season, I've been able to do that less than half the time.  I thought I could run 26 low the first 200, but that is not the case, as demonstrated by my last 300m event run.  I really have no business going out much faster than 27.  Today, I ran near even splits and both my 400s were faster than yesterday and no 200 split was faster than 28.23. 

I'm trying to get better in estimating my speed.  To start, I tried to run exactly a 14 sec 100m and nailed it .

Hoka trainers on

stretches, drills, 2 x 100m, bands

100m - 14.07

400m - 58.65 (29.06, 29.59 / 14.25, 14.81, 14.35, 15.24)

400m - 57.96 (28.23, 29.73 / 13.66, 14.57, 14.62, 15.11)

200m - 27.81

So, I'll try this workout again tomorrow.  I will push the first half to the point of diminishing returns.  I was happy to run the second one faster than the first with only about 25 min rest in between.  

Comparing the 2, I gained 0.69 sec on the second 400m.  The gains came in the first 200m where I gained 0.83, but only lost 0.14 in the second 200m (mostly in the 3rd 300).   And the second 400m, will be harder of course due to fatigue.  I'll try to inch my time forward in the next workouts and see where that point is of diminishing returns.  When fresh, warmed up, and hyped up for a track meet, 27.5+ can feel very slow for the first 200m of a race, but that's the point.  

I tried my Hoka Rincons today.  They felt pretty good.  More toe room.

138.6 lbs after workout.  

Got to the track this afternoon early to get back at 6pm to see the last day of the Olympic Trials but they were reschedule on NBC to tonight at 10:30pm due to the highest temperatures ever recorded today in Oregon.  It reached 110º