Some 200s on the Track

A few weeks ago, I hit the track for some 800s and 400s. And last week I REALLY shortened them up: I did 12x200 with 45 sec rest on the track.

Some potential drips on the way before sunrise.


A selfie after my warm-up before starting the heart of the workout.

I'm trying to be prepared for a 1 mile road race in a few weeks, so that's why I did some super short track work. I REALLY didn't know what to expect for this workout. I knew that 4 years ago (as I was also trying to run a sub-5:00 mile which I DID in 4:54 [4:57 on my watch]), I did this same workout with an average of 0:34.4/200. Knowing I hit sub-5:00 in a mile later that year made me shoot for around that 34.4 average again. I had hoped to be a little faster, but had no reason to think that.

I ran the first one in 0:35.2 and was a little bummed. I over-compensated on #2 and ran a faster 0:33.0. And the great news is that except for the first one, I ran the rest all faster than my average time 4 years ago! Here's what I ran:

0:35.2
0:33.0
0:32.7
0:33.0
0:33.0
0:33.9
0:33.9
0:34.2
0:33.6
0:34.2
0:34.2
0:33.2

= 0:33.675 ave

One of the rests was 0:47 (instead of 0:45) because of timing with someone else doing laps on the track, and another was 0:43 for the same reason. But the rest of the "rests" were 0:45 or 0:46.

That average of 0:33.675 was faster than 4 years ago by about 0.7 sec, but still nearly a second slower than when I first did the workout 9 years ago. I was happy with that!!

Lots of 200s.


My pace chart is to be expected...


... as is my heart rate.


It's interesting to see how my HR is still climbing at the end of these
short intervals, and how it often peaks after the running is over.


For how nasty this felt, I spent no time in zone 5.

I realized I had missed the "so short it hardly feels like a workout" sort of a workout. Afterall, the "guts" of this workout was under 2 miles even including the walking between the intervals. And the GOOD NEWS was that my legs still felt OK the rest of the day! But the BAD NEWS was that my left Achilles suddenly got tight the following day. So I'm not sure if I'll be throwing in my 2 more planned speedy track days before the 1 mile race in just under 3 weeks or not - I don't want to blow up and injure myself before the race!