Track Tuesday

May 19, 2009

Today was the second track session for me this season. After 10×200 (average around 33secs, 100m jog rec.) last wednesday, todays program consisted of 8x400m with 200m jog recovery. The times were between 70 and 72seconds, with only the last two reps being sub 70. For most of the readers this might sound pedestrian (and in fact it is) but in the first track session I found it quite difficult to adjust to the right pace. You don’t want to go “all out” in the first repetition but on the other hand you should feel the exhaustion towards the end of the workout. All in all the times were pretty much as expected but I hope to see some progression in a couple of weeks. That is either running faster or running more and/or longer repeats. The leg turnover feels ok, so the main thing is to get the metabolism getting used to some lactate and oxygen debt – oh I really hate this but it has to be done The – “Pain is temporary but pride is forever” – attitude helps and after the work-out the feeling of relief outweighs the suffering!!

Somehow I should get used to 3minutes pace if I want to run the 10.000m under 31 minutes this summer. My first 10.000m track will be the state district championships in my German home district of Saxony (Sachsen) on June 4th.

I’m still thinking about last weekends Finnish Cross Country Championships (SM-maasto) and after reviewing the results I am pretty sure that I would have placed somewhere between 8th and 15th. That is pretty much where all the guys came in, who I beat in the Halfmarathon Championships. So I will have to prove somnething in the Finnish 10.000m track Championships (called “Kalevan Kisat”) end of July.

In the close future I am planning to compete in some smaller competitions and use them as tempo runs and tests of fitness.