Thursday, December 18, 2008

Back to the Track!

First post surgery run at the track today.  Put on my (dusty) light weight shoes and jogged the 1/2 mile down to the high school track.  Perfect conditions: low 40's, no wind and pitch black (so no-one could see me).

Plan was 4x1200 meters in 5:00 (6:42 min/mile) with 90 seconds recovery jog in between.  Back in June I was doing these 1200s around 4:30 (~6:00 min/mile).  I guestimated fitness and pace based on yesterday's tempo run but it was not very scientific.
  • Number 1 wasn't bad, got on pace quickly and did 4:57.
  • Number 2 went a little quicker at 4:52.
  • Number 3 started too fast (1:32 first lap vs 1:40) which hurt, but I held on to come in at 4:53.
  • Number 4 was 3:11 thru 2 laps and then I went for it on the last lap and did a 91 sec lap to finish in 4:42 (or 6:20 min/mile).
Average for the 4 was 4:51, so I am a little fitter than I guesstimated, and it felt great to be running fast on the track.  Although I am about 20 seconds off my pre-injury times.

So next time I will shoot for 4:45 and probably go up to 5x, which I suspect make it difficult for me to get thru reps #4 and #5 on pace.  Then I'll take 1 sec/lap off when I'm able to hit the last one on pace and I'll also up the reps to 6x at some point.  I'm guessing that I should be able to get to 6x1200 at 4:30 by about March (Shamrock) and closer to 4:20 by May (Ottawa).

Next up: my first double digit run this Saturday.

It's good to be back.

1 comment:

ryandavid said...

Alan - glad to see you're making progress. If you've got a minute, I'd like to pick your brain about some of the symptoms you were experiencing. I may have fallen into the class of "dumb" athletes (as opposed to the elite) who've acquired SH. Shoot me an email if you can! rdw37 "at" drexel.edu