Course: East 6th Street Track
Workout: 5 x 1000m intervals – Attacking/Defending
Mind: I’m a runner, not a fighter.
Body: I’m no runner. Shut up.
Discovered: My maximum heart rate is at least 194. My heart’s getting younger and younger!
In the ongoing saga called Convince The Turtle He Can Run, I subjected myself to a track workout wherein one of the group was supposed to “attack” or make a strong move to pull ahead, and the rest of the group was supposed to defend the attack by staying with the attacker.
And here I thought running was going to be a meditative, peaceful activity.
Since my first workout with the Central Park Track Club I’ve improved my speed and strength quite a bit (which isn’t that hard to do when you’re starting from the bottom). This means I’m finishing my intervals ahead of most of the least-fast group these days, which pleases me – but not too much, because some of these runners are grandparents – but it also means that for this workout I was basically running these intervals alone, ahead of the rest of my group. So, in the spirit of the workout, I created an imaginary runner that I would “attack” with a burst of speed at the prescribed intervals. But just creating a faceless, generic runner was no fun, so I got a little creative with it.
I hear that Dubya’s a pretty fast little runner, but on this day, I kicked his ass.
THE WORKOUT:
400 warm up
3 x 200 strides + 100 jog
1000 + 400 rcvry (even 5k pace)
1000 + 400 rcvry (attack 200-600)
1000 + 400 rcvry (attack 400-800)
1000 + 400 rcvry (attack 600-1000)
1000 + 400 rcvry (attack 800-1000)
400 cool-down
Total distance: 8500m (5.3 mi)
