Possibly My Best Interval Workout Ever

... and quickly becoming one of my favorite workouts.

I've written about this 3x (4x400) interval workout before: in April of last year, in Sept of last year, and I even did a version in Jamaica 2 months ago. As I've gotten older, I've shyed away from "longer" intervals like 2x2 miles or 3x1600 for shorter things like this.

Between having a BIG first half of the week WHILE being home with a kid who was getting over Covid, I wasn't sure I'd be doing this workout. I went to bed Thursday night feeling BEAT UP, and then didn't get up early for the track workout on Friday as I felt like I had a 50/50 shot of having Covid. But I took a Covid test when I got up, and it was negative, so I figured I'd hit the track.

Pic of trashed Covid test later in the day
(on top of Clorox wipes and my wife's hair).

This 3x (4x400) workout was to have 1 min between 400s and 3 mins between the sets. I was ready for them to suck being I didn't feel great. There was a college kid out just casually running laps as I was about to start, and his presence pushed me a bit. I didn't look back to previous times/splits for this workout, but I knew early last year that my first set average around 1:18, and then I dropped from there (thinking I was 1:16 for the 2nd set, and 1:15 for the 3rd set).

I took off "strong," and then was shocked when my first interval was 1:14! I knew I couldn't maintain that! The first "test" of this workout would come with interval #2: how much time would I give up? But #2 was ALSO 1:14! I wasn't thinking this would last, but I was also going to keep working and shooting for a solid workout. My first set looked like this:

1:14.6, 1:14.9, 1:15.2, 1:14.2 = 1:14.73 average

That 1:14 average was faster than ANY AVERAGE from this workout, ever!! My fastest version of this workout had the 3 sets being averaged at 1:16.6, 1:16.3, and 1:15.4. And I BEAT THAT on my first set! The goal was to now HOLD ON.

1:14.0, 1:14.6, 1:14.5, 1:13.5 = 1:14.15 average

Holy crap. I was even FASTER in my 2nd set! These times were wild! Sure, it's only a few seconds faster than my best version of this workout, but a few seconds in a 400 while it's only mid-March is a great sign! My legs almost buckled coming around the final turn of my 8th interval, so now it was time to see what I could do in the final set (#9-12):

1:14.8, 1:13.4, 1:13.0, 1:11.3 = 1:13.13 average

Nice. Descending the sets nicely, and descending those last 4 within that final set really nicely! After those 1:13s as #10 and #11, I told myself that I could get down into the 1:12s for #12, but I was able to get even a bit farther under that.

Yep, that's what that should look like.
(Split #2 was still warming-up getting to the track.)


I don't buy that I maxxed out at 153 bpm - my intervals had a higher HR than my cool down.

This one just felt good... especially after feeling so crappy for the 12 hours leading up to this. This might go down as one of my best interval workouts ever.