Training Log - Thursday, June 7, 2012

My first track workout in years. I had decided to add something new to my current training program to help me get faster over every distance and to change up my new (old) training routine. I showed up at the Grissom High School track to work out with the local ¨Need for Speed¨ training group not knowing what to expect, but thankfully, there were a few familiar faces. Not having done a formal track workout ever before (I´m an old dog trying to learn a new trick;-), I didn´t know what would be expected of me, but when I learned that I wasn´t the only one fairly new to this, I was slightly more relaxed.

The speed workout lead this week was Lynn and she had something for us called the speed ladder workout, I think. We would start at 10K pace and get progressively faster. We started with a 1 mile warm-up followed by 1600m at 10K pace with a 400m recovery jog, followed by 1200m at 5K pace with a 400m recovery jog, followed by 800m at 5K pace with 400m recovery jog, followed by 400m at 1 mile pace with 1 mile cool-down. I made sure I went progressively faster, starting the first mile after the warm-up a little slower than I thought. I made up for it by going faster than originally planned on the remaining ladder workouts. It felt pretty good to do some speed work with purpose. I´m sure my hill repeats help my speed, but there is nothing that replaces a good old fashioned track workout, or so I´m told by folks with much more running experience than myself.

Thanks again to Lynn for organizing and running this week´s workout and thanks to all the other folks participating for making this not only a purposeful but fun workout.