5x1600. 4:57, 4:52, 4:50, 4:52, 4:44
I left work at 5PM and drove over to Sequoia high school for some good old-fashioned mile repeats. The weather was in the 90s earlier in the day but by the time I finished my warm-up it didn't feel like it was that hot. My legs were feeling decent on the warm-up and strides so I was confident this would turn out to be a good workout. Perhaps I had unreasonably low expectations and thought I'd be satisfied with running some 5:00 miles. I started out a bit slow on the first interval and came through the first lap in 76. That lap didn't feel so smooth and seeing how it was slow I was worried a bit that I would have to work hard to run 5:00 pace. Turns out one lap was all my legs needed to loosen up and I was able to pick up the pace and feel more comfortable. I was 2:30-3:43 at the end of the next two laps and held on to that pace until the end of the interval. I took a 400m jog between intervals and did a good job at keeping the rest relatively short. I was getting right into a jog at the end of my intervals and took between 3:05-3:20 to cover my rest lap. I made a slight effort to get out faster in the second interval and came through in 73, somewhat surprised since it felt really comfortable. I ran even 73s the rest of the way and felt in control the whole time. On the 3rd interval I ran 72s for the first two laps and 73s for the last two. I got out in 71 on the 4th but slowed down too much on the 2nd lap and came through the 800 in 2:25. I worked the 3rd lap some more to come through in 3:48 and ended up with a low 4:52. I felt almost completely recovered as I was getting ready to start my last interval and figured I could push the pace some more. I got out in 70-2:21-3:33 and closed decently with another 71. I felt like I could have blown away that last lap but reminded myself that this was just a workout and kept it under control. I put in about 4 miles around Redwood City for my cool-down and called it a day with some strides on the infield. I was very happy with how things turned out today, I haven't looked back at past workouts but I'm pretty sure this must be my best mile repeat workout ever. It was one of those workouts you dream of having, when you step on the track with some goal pace in mind and are able to destroy that window and feel very comfortable doing it. You can definitely argue that I should have had a more aggressive goal but
seeing how much I've struggled running hard workouts on my own over the last year and with my legs tired from all the mileage, it's hard to blame myself for not hammering a workout from the gun. The times by themselves might not be that impressive but the way the workout progressed was the big confidence booster. I wasn't really working hard until the last interval and even in that there was a lot more left in the tank. I was able to get the legs moving fast and felt like I was smoothly flowing around the track. One of those rare days when everything is clicking, hopefully there's more like this to come.
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