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16 x 400m, an Anthony-Pete Hybrid

October 3, 2019 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
The weather in Boston tonight could not have been more different from yesterday's 95-degree roast in DC. I swear I saw flurries on my way home from work. Passing the MIT track on my bike, I saw there was an event going on so I decided I would run to the Harvard track and hope that was free (Northeastern’s track is somewhere on the far side of town, so I’ve never used despite being a grad student there for the last 4 years). I got a little lost on the way so it ended being 2 miles, the perfect warm-up, just like at Williams. I’d been wresting all day with what kind of workout to do, but over the course of my leg swings, sprint drills, and 8 full-length striders, I finally made up my mind to do my favorite high school workout: sixteen 400s. Or rather, 12-16 of them. I didn’t know how many I could really tolerate, as I’d never done this sort of workout alone before. I figured that since I’m focusing on 5K’s the next several weeks that this might be exactly the kind of work out I needed rather than the longer and slower intervals I tend to do with the BAA, whose club members are always marathon-focused.

The Anthony approach to this workout (or at least the way we did it my sophomore year) was to run them all the same pace with a 1-minute recovery, taking a lap job after each set of four. At Williams, our coach Pete Farwell had cut off 10 seconds from the recovery each time for the set of 6-8 then and then cutting down the pace by two seconds each lap on the second set. Initially, I opted for the Anthony method, figuring I needed the consistency and that any rest under minute felt impossibly tight. Given how distant heartening Tuesday’s work out at Fort Reno had been for me, I didn’t have high expectations for myself in terms of pace, so I resolved to try to run 80-82 seconds for most of them cutting down the pace to the end if I could.

However, my new spikes turn out to be made of magic. On the first pickup I flew around the track in a 75.0 without even realizing it. There’s something thrilling about having a track all to yourself at night, glowing in the floodlights of an adjacent soccer field, with distance neon storefronts beaconing you on. I reigned in the pace on the next one but my body clearly just wanted to mooooove and I found my way back down to a 76. The recoveries, meanwhile, felt bizarrely generous. I remembered Anthony’s one-minute recoveries in high school feeling extremely short but tonight I felt in my breathing returning to normal in less than a third of that time. I was listening to an awesome playlist that drowned out the sound of my own breathing, so I didn’t really realize how hard I was working, aside from a disconcerting soreness in my calves during the last 100-200m each time. Anna Kendrick's rendition of Cups seemed to have the perfect beat for a 5-minute mile pace.

After four pickups, I decided to switch from the Anthony method to the Pete method. Therefore, for the next 6 pickups I cut down the rest for 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, and finally 20s. They diminishing recoveries gave me something to focus on during the pickups, and I no longer needed to count how many I’d or worry how more were ahead of me so long as I knew who short the next cooldown would be. I guess it’s a good sign for my aerobic fitness that I didn’t even start to feel the effects of shortening the recovery until the 30-second one. The 20-second recovery basically felt like I was running 800 with a tiny almost useless pause at the halfway point, which is how I remember it from college. I went pretty hard on the last one since I knew I’d have a full lap afterward to fully recover.

The last six pickups were kind of fun since I was feeling confident by this time and knew I’d be able to get through the whole workout. I started off the first one listening to "I’ll Make a Man out of You” which, ever since re-watching that Mulan with some of y'all three weeks ago, has been a huge motivator for me. It’s pretty hard to shave off exactly 2 seconds each time, but I realized as I was doing it that it’s a smart goal to have, since you’ll probably shave off some amount of time regardless whereas if your goal was to go only one second faster its easier to screw up and run the same time or slower. On average, each of my intervals was three seconds faster. I kept shedding more layers as I went, starting with my jacket though it was still pretty chilly out.

With two pickups to go I tossed aside my phone and headphones, figuring that now is the time to simply focus on going all out (and I must admit, the image that came to mind was of Luke Skywalker turning off his visual display and just navigating by sight/Force in his final approach to the Death Star). Those last two pickups were incredibly tough but full of glory. I told myself that if I went full speed on the second-to-last one but didn’t fight all out to the finish then I could still improve in the very last one by treating it like a race.

To motivate myself on the back straight, I found myself conjuring up images of all by thinking of all the great sprints I’d seen in the past week: Anthony’s kick to the finish during the Rock the Creek Relay, the last 50 meters I ran with Matt Siff at Fort Reno, the 400s I ran with Nathaniel and Lucy, Amelia’s amazing striders. All of those became a composite image of motivation as I told myself I couldn’t possibly implore those runners to do something I couldn’t push myself to do.

There comes a point in the final hundred meters of a race where you're already breathing all out, commanding your legs and arms to go all out, and pushing your hips and torso forward all out, and the only way to go faster is to simply want it desperately enough. I knew I needed to find another gear, and in my last 30m, I found it, a secret energy source descending onto me in my hour (okay, 10 seconds) of need. I found that other gear in the wanting.

Here are my splits, displayed Ruby-style, since like her I don’t have the patience to put them into the little text boxes running-log provides.

One-minute Recovery Set:
75
80
79
76

Decreasing-recovery set:
78
76
76
76
77
77

Increasing-pace set (45-second recovery):
81
78
74
72
68
66

Average: 76