400 Repeats with Henry

Last week, Henry and I hit the track together for some 400s. He was not excited.

I waited for him to get up, so I pushed back my normal start time by about 2 hours. So it was hotter and sunnier on the track. We decided to use the 200 meter mark for our start/finish because it was in the shade (I'd never done that before on the St. Thomas track). I planned to do 3x(4x400) with 60 sec between 400s and 3:00 between sets, but figured after the first 4 that I would quit early. I didn't want to overdo anything on my calf that I'm still nursing back from an injury. So did 4, 4, then only 2.

I had Henry just do 8 intervals (2 sets of 4 intervals) because that feels a lot easier. So we took off together knowing that I would be slowly starting subsequent intervals before him.

I ran a slower 1:18 to start, but then the rest of my "first set" were all 1:14. I was trying to work hard. Here's what I ran:

1:18.8
1:14.2
1:14.3
1:14.2

1:15.6
1:14.5
1:14.6
1:12.3

1:14.8
1:12.7

Sure, it would have been NICE to get in 12 and not just 10, but at least I did a few in that 3rd set - those final 2 hurt.

Here's a pic of Henry finishing one of his middle intervals:

Ready on the watch, ready to hit the line.

He was faster than I thought he would be! I does NOT like running hard, but he knows it helps him to get faster. He had just ran some 200s at 0:45 each with his cross country teammates (that's 6:00 / mile pace for 200s, which is NOT fast for high school boys). So I wondered if he could keep up that same pace for 400s... so I told him his goal was to try to hit 1:30 for his 400s. His first 400 was 1:24! I think all of them were about 1:22 through 1:27, with him dying a bit more on his last one that was 1:29. That's not bad for someone still learning pacing!

Now I'll see if I can get him to the track with me with any sort of regularity. I was making sure I was nothing but positive with him while he was out there! (Which was easy because he TRULY was doing well.) He really did NOT like working that hard, but I hope he knows how helpful these hard workouts are for his cross country speed!