In 2022, I hit the track for some shorter-than-usual workouts to try to get a sub-5:00 1 mile before "aging out" of that possibility. I kept it up in 2023 and did it again! At that point, I wondered if I could PR in a 2024 mile (sub-4:49), but I didn't have it in me last year as I finished in 4:52 (which is still not bad!).
So would I shoot for a PR 1-mile again this year?
No.
When thought about racing the Oakdale Spring Classic Duathlon, I knew that if I did, there would go the chance of a 1-mile PR race. Doing that duathlon meant 2 weeks of no track work (I do track workouts on Fridays, so I wouldn't do one 2 days pre-race, and I wouldn't do one the following week as to let me legs heal up from a race pace effort). And those would have been 2 critical weeks for starting some shorter/harder speed workouts. But I made the decision to race the duathlon, and I was fine with not "going for broke" in the 1 mile race in a few weeks.
When I finally hit the track for a shorter/harder 1-mile specific workout, I did this old Coach Jen Harrison workout: 16x200 done as 4x(4x200) with 200 easy running between the 200s, and 3:00 rest between the sets of 4. I last did this workout just before last year's 1 mile race, but I also did it earlier that summer and didn't post about it. I didn't have much for time goals, but I just wanted to try to descend the sets of 4 and suffer!
My opening set of 4 was fine.
I was a bit faster in my 2nd set, but lost track of what my splits were.
I worked nicely in the 3rd set, but didn't know if I was faster or slower than the 2nd.
And then I beat that time in 4th set while feeling like I was going to trip over my legs during the last 75 meters of each interval. I was hashed!!
Here were my splits, with the (important) 200 meter split first, and then the (much less important) 200 meter easy jog in parentheses:
35.1 (1:04)
36.6 (1:00)
35.9 (0:59)
36.2 (2:58) = 35.95 average
34.9 (1:01)
35.8 (0:58)
35.0 (0:59)
35.3 (2:58) = 35.25 average
34.7 (1:00)
35.4 (1:00)
34.6 (0:58)
34.5 (2:57) = 34.80 average
33.6 (1:00)
34.5 (1:00)
34.4 (1:01)
33.9 (2:12) = 34.10 average
ALRIGHT! A NICE DESCEND!! That's -0.70 sec from 1st to 2nd, -0.45 sec from 2nd to 3rd, and -0.70 sec from 3rd to 4th.I wasn't quite as fast as last year just before the race (which is hard to compare because I did that workout on a paved trail), and it was 0.5 to 0.9 secs slower than the averages from this same workout on the track just over a year ago (where my sets averaged 35.50, 34.78, 33.93, and 33.73 seconds).
16 intervals: notice there's no jogging right after the final one...
... because I cut across the track (walking) because I was D.O.N.E.