Another Great Speed Workout

Yesterday I ran my second speed workout at the Tufts Gym. The DFMC group meets there Tuesdays at 8:00. This week we ran 20 x 400m intervals. We executed these in 5 sets of 4. Between each set we ran a 400m easy. Between each other 400m we ran 200m easy. In total, with warmup and cool down I ran almost exactly 10 miles. For those of you counting, thats 30 miles in 3 days! The day in between, Reef and I did a craptastic swim workout at the Y. Luckily for me, all I needed was something to flush out some lactic acid in my legs from the day before, which I think I got. For Reef, however, he had to cut his workout short due to a very crowded pool (6 people per lane?!) and some ridiculously slow swimmers. But I digress.

So our 200m laps were averaging 0:53 which is about a 7:04 pace. We managed to keep that pace incredibly consistent through the entire set of 20. Now, here's something I learned at last week's speed workout, regarding how to gauge your marathon pace and preparedness. For some reason or another, it works out very well that your mm:ss pace on an 800m interval workout tends to correlate very well to your hh:mm pace for a marathon. This assumes you can sustain that 800m pace for 10 or more intervals with perhaps no more than 200m rests in between. But let me break down an example:

We were running 55sec laps for our 800m strides last week. So that correlates to a 03:40 (mm:ss) 800m (i.e. a 7:20 mile) Now, assuming you can sustain that pace for an extended 800m workout with little rest between sets, that implies you are prepared to run a 03:40 (hh:mm) marathon (an 8:23 pace). So this in other words, this is a fantastic way to gauge your goal. Now, we (Eric and I) were able to run that pace consistently but we did 8x800m with 400m rests (not 200m). So I don't think we're there yet. But Jack seems to think with enough speed work, we can get there by race day.

Now, I'm going to do a similar thing to translate our 400m workout yesterday to a half marathon:
We averaged a 53.5 sec 200m yesterday, or a 01:47 (mm:ss) 400m. This is a 7:08 min/mile btw. So tht 01:47 400m correlates to a 01:47 (hh:mm) half marathon (an 8:09/mi pace). So this is fascinating because the last half marathon I ran, with Jenn in October, was at an 8:10 pace. Now, I'd like to believe I've improved a bit since then, but perhaps more in endurance and less in speed, so I would believe those numbers. So as I am to improve these speeds, I can expect to see some corresponding improvement in my longer races.

At any rate, these workouts are a lot of fun, because they add variety, and a new challenge. Eric and I alternated taking the lead every other 400m and we kept each other motivated to keep up the speed. So it works out great.

Unfortunately today, I'm feeling some real tightness in my right calf, up high, just about behind my knee. I'm continuing to stretch it throughout the day. But I'm EXTREMELY grateful to be keeping my shin and ankle problems at bay. I'm continuing to take Advil before each run, and increasing the amount of icing I'm doing after tough runs.

Tonight is Runner's Meeting in Boston. And tomorrow I hope to make my first Crossroads run and get an 8-10 miler in (which will include heartbreak hill).

Here are the splits from yesterday, there are many of them:

400m Splits

53 days and counting down...