Wheez…hack…Wheez…hack. I bruised my ego tonight on the track.
As part of my “plan” for this season I felt I needed to get some really hard intensity in my running. Now I throw in plenty of intensity but we’re talking about very different levels of intensity. Two years ago as I was beginning to find my fitness after a bit of a respite from running my intensity was low but steady working towards being able to go long but there wasn’t a whole lot of faster running. Last year I added in tempo work consistently and it paid dividends as my overall run pace dropped. At the end of the season I assessed my current running and drawing on many, many years of running on the track, trails and roads I knew what I needed to do to take it to the next and move to the next plateau in my run fitness…I had to hit the track.
Why do I need to hit the track? For me and many other runners and multisport athletes who grew up running there is difference between running hard on the road or trails and running hard on the track. There is something about the track that is associated with speed, fast running and frankly pain. So for me it’s a motivator to help me run hard. My goal with hitting the track isn’t to become a top class miler or 800m runner but rather to shock my system a bit. The focus is to run hard for short durations with a focus on form, fast turnover and pushing the body hard for short durations. The goal is over time that my body will begin to remember what it’s like to run hard and run tired because to be fast on the track you have to be able to finish strong.
So tonight I returned to the track. It was short, intense, painful and ego bruising. I ran over to my local high school track and proceeded to test myself with 4 x (400m hard/200m jog recovery/200m hard/200m jog recovery). The goal was simple; run hard, run consistent and focus (pump the arms, turn the legs over, drive forward hard and run through the finish). I did well but it hurt. Tonight I hit my 400’s pretty consistently at 1:25 (5:40 mile pace) and my 200’s were at 40 seconds (5:20 mile pace). I started to doubt whether I could hold the pace for all the intervals after the second one but I managed.
Now here’s the dark side of getting back to the track. My ego got a little bruised tonight. Not by anyone else running there tonight but rather by my youth. The last time I was doing track intervals was quite a few years ago and at that time I was doing 400’s repeats in 1:12 and in my prime in college a typical track session would be 15 x 400 averaging between 58 seconds and 1:02. Tonight if I had spikes on and was running an open 400m I think I would have been lucky to break 1:10. I have learned from the past few years that you can’t compete with your youth because you won’t win but if you want to improve you need to live in the moment and savor your abilities and accomplishments today.
So when you get stagnant think outside the box a little and push yourself, go further, go harder and shake things up and you just might find a little bit of your youth again.
Now I need Advil, an ice bath and a cold recovery beer.
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