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Six by k!

September 10, 2019 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Ran with the BAA this evening at their weekly track workout. The workout was supposed to be 6x1000, jogging the 200m back to the start line after each one to recover, followed by 5x300m faster. The 1000s were supposed to be at lactaid threshold pace, but like most workouts I've done with the BAA, I pretty much disregarded those instructions and just tried to run at the fastest pace I could reasonably sustain for the whole workout without having to sprint and or give an all out effort at the end. Basically, my goal was to run even splits and stay with the group, all of whom were invariably running faster than they were supposed to as well. I wonder what would happen if we actually all ran the pace we were supposed to. Maybe we'd be in better shape? I don't have any regrets in this instance though because the workouts are geared toward marathon training, whereas I'm training for 5-10ks, so I felt like a faster pace would actually be good for me here.

As it happened, I managed to pace it just about perfectly. I led the first pickup for about 200m but then decided we were going too fast and let Katsu take the lead. He shouldn't have. I tried to engage him in casual conversation as a way of slowing him down, but he still flew through 10 seconds faster than he was aiming for and then was struggling in the back for the next five pickups. I mostly let Brett or Kevin lead on the rest of them, always making sure my first 200m was around 42 and my first 400m was around 84 or 85. Usually, I let a gap open up during the opening 800m but then finish side-by-side with whoever was leading on the last 200m. Brett was way too aggressive on the 5th pickup, gaining an extra 2 seconds in the first 200m alone, and I told him so, which may have prompted him to correct course (we finished exactly 2 seconds faster than our previous pickups). On the last one, therefore, I told him to let me lead the first lap and then he could go hard if he wanted to after that. He ran next to me for most of it, which was wasteful given that he had to run longer on the curves, but then fell back on the next lap so that I ended up leading the group the whole way. I tried to curtail my last 200m but I was just so excited by seeing the finish line that I'm sure I pickup up the pace. We finished once again 2 seconds fast but paced smarter this time which I'm proud of. The first 5k together add up to 17:37, which is over a minute faster than my 5k cross country race this past Sunday. Certainly way faster than lactaid-threshold pace (more like 2-mile pace), but hopefully something that will get me in better shape.

My left hamstring started bothering me in the middle of the workout and for once I had the maturity to tell other guys I was going to skip the speed work at the end on account of it. They agreed with me that was a smart decision. A really smart decision would have been to drop out of the workout even earlier. As it was, I ended up walking home with a bit of a limp, rather than the doing a cool down jog, and skipping the Wednesday morning run with Jernst I had planned. Hopefully this gets better in a couple days.