Saturday, February 23 (10x800)

Saturdays are going to be my track work days. The plan is to run slightly longer intervals each Saturday while maintaining race pace. The overall volume of intervals is slightly lower than the full race distance as well, mostly because the race distance is really long.

I'm using these for pace and rhythm. Fitness comes on Monday (steady state runs) and speed comes on Thursday (fartlek/reps). So today I wanted to be as relaxed and smooth as possible while running the workout.

I went to Rossi with the team and snuck away to Pomona's track to work out before the races began. They had barriers out over the first three lanes, so I worked out in lane four, improvising a little on the correct location of the four-turn stagger starting line, but I think I got it to within a meter.

From the very first one I felt kind of stiff and tight. In retrospect, this might have been a remnant from the long run on Wednesday, but regardless I didn't like it. The pace felt aerobically fine, but my legs were reluctant.

Ian came by after I had done two and said I looked like I was "jogging", which I guess is a pretty good sign. (He was running some mile repeats at the same time, but didn't seem at all inclined to throw down a few 2:30's with me.)

The good news is that the workout felt pretty much the same all the way through. Number three and number eight were pretty much equally uncomfortable. So I guess I wasn't getting too much more tired, but was just having a slightly off day.

My splits were mostly consistent. They were almost all 2:28 or 2:29, except a 2:26 in the middle followed immediately by a 2:30. The last one I pushed a bit harder, especially on lap two, and ran 2:21.

I cooled down briefly to get back to the track, then had a good time watching the meet and jogging with various homeys. Kiesz ran a strong 1200 leg on the DMR, and Anton had a PR 3000m at 9:22, which puts him on the all-time top ten list on his first try (at number 10).