After a few months of just running miles, intentionally keeping speed off the plate, last night I got in the first of my 400m intervals. Though I did quarter miles, because the garmin had a setting for that, and I am its willing thrall. Plus, I don’t have a nearby school track.
It was a blazingly hot day here in MI (96° at 6pm when I got home) so I put the run off until almost 8pm. As the western end of the Eastern time zone, we have 9pm sunsets for the next couple months.
I ran a 1 mile warmup, then 4x400m with 1 minute walking cooldowns. It felt good to push myself. My 4 intervals were a terrible mess, with splits alternating between 2:15 and 2:00 (9:00/mile and 8:00/mile respectively). Consistency will only come with practice, so I’ll try again next week, and hopefully stay a bit closer to my 9:00 target.
I’m going to do walking cooldowns for the intervals while I get started. At first it felt unnatural to reduce my pace so suddenly, but it helped my heartrate recover really rapidly. When I get a bit more practiced with speedwork (which I will, because this is Speedwork Summer for me) I will move up to more ambitious workouts.
Wisely and Slow 