Greg's Running Blog

Tuesday was my very first track day. Up until this point I have been running on bike trails and residential streets in my neighborhood. It has been working out great for me, I just drive up to the trail head and go for a run or walk out the front door and off I go. But Tuesday’s prescribed training was my very first interval training day. Until now, Hal Higdon’s Advanced Spring Training plan was calling for hill intervals on Tuesdays and I have been doing them religiously on the treadmill at work or at home in front of my neighborhood on a 3% incline.

But this Tuesday it said I was supposed to run 200 meter intervals, 16 of them to boot. That sounds like a whole heck of a lot of running. 16 200 meter intervals are 3,200 meters, 2 miles by themselves. That does not sound all that daunting. But when you consider that you have to run them pretty darn fast and you have to jog an additional 200 meters between every single one of them for cool down the distance just doubled to 4 miles. Then you add in a mile and a half of warm up and another mile and a half for cool down and you’re up to 7 miles, 2 of which are at a brutal fast pace.

So my first quest of the day was to locate a track. There is a track at the local university where the local running club actually meets every Tuesday at 6:00PM. I was thinking about going there, and hopefully meeting some other runners. But that track is a bit out of my way so I was looking for a closer alternative. There are actually two tracks in my local school district, one is at the high school and the other one is at the middle school. The high school one is closer but it’s closed. The middle school one is a bit further but it is open to the public any time. Perfect!

So after work, I went straight to the track. When I showed up around 5:30, there were three kids there running on the astroturf in the middle but they were mostly just chatting. I started running my warm-up laps and by the time I was done they were gone. I did a good bit of stretching afterward and I started running my 200 meter intervals. The first one felt great but my enthusiasm and effort quickly declined after the first one. The plan called for an 800m race pace effort, which for me is around 5:39 minutes/mile. I ran every single one of them way faster than this.

As I was running the intervals a couple more people showed up and they started walking/jogging/running around the track. None of them were what you would consider elite athletes, they were there to lose weight or get their daily basic cardio exercise in. I look at folks like them with a completely different eye now. Before I was thinking they’re just wasting their time and why would anyone walk around in circles? But now I think that they’re making a difference in their lives and it’s great to see more and more people outside getting or staying in shape.

I actually talked with one of them, a man in his 60s who was still running 25+ miles a week, and he told me that he used to be pretty darn fast and could run 5 minute miles when he was in his 40s. Looking at my interval times you can tell that I can barely run that pace for 200 meters, 1/8th of a mile. We had a good 20 minute conversation after my run and cool-down and I’m sure I’ll see him at the track next week.

Even though the training felt pretty brutal and I was close to full exhaustion I’m actually really looking forward next week’s intervals, that time they’ll be 10x400m.