I am jumping in a road mile this Saturday evening in Jacksonville (lord help me!) and today’s track workout is perfect for priming the body for the quick pain and mental discomfort of the mile. 😆
A bit of background: I raced the mile quite a bit in high school (to relative moderate success). I enjoyed how quick the race was over and how fast your could feel when you were in shape and paced yourself well. But. The burning of lungs and your quads in that race is something on another level. I avoided the mile successfully in college and have only raced a few times since those days. (For some reason the pain of a 5k feels much more like my wheelhouse.)
So here we are. Coming off several months of rest/physical therapy/walking/building back to fitness and no racing since March. The mile seems like the best way to get back to the rush and fun of racing.
Workout: long easy warmup with some hills thrown in there to get our knee drive primed. Strides and drills at the track. 4X400m with equal time recovery. Run each 400 in lane 4. (Running a lap in lane four is longer than lane one, obviously. This also makes your body very disoriented.) Long easy cool down.
It was tough and my muscles had a few things to say to me, but I do feel better equipped to handle the discomfort on Saturday. 😆
Wore the Altra Torins 4.5 for the warm up and the Altra Escalante for the speed part. Banana was for post workout.