I've been jamming to Young the Giant the past few days and was listening to the CD on the way to the track workout last night so my mile repeats were accompanied by bursts of "I Got." Not exactly a speedy tune, per se, but it worked to keep me relaxed when I was forcing it a bit the second and third repeat last night.
My last attempt at mile repeats didn't go over so well, so I was excited to give the workout another go. Given before Boston I had two successful 5*1600 workouts last nights 3*1600 didn't sound too intimidating. It was a bit windy and coach wanted our repeats as close to 3k pace as possible. I'm not sure what my 3k pace is right now but he said faster than 5:50, but preferably closer to 5:45 (which is a little depressing since the last two 5*1600 workout targets were supposedly 10k pace and were done around 5:50, but my current fitness is what it is and I know it will improve soon). So we took off aiming for 86 or 87 quarters. First mile felt really smooth and we were a hair fast in 5:41.32. Next repeat was work but managed to keep it close at 5:43.67. Third repeat was rough, I felt a little steamed the first lap, upped the effort but was a second behind by 1000 meters and really had to push to get it even at 5:43.73 even though I moved in to the inside of the lane the last lap after having run the rest of the workout on the outside. These were all with 3 minute rests then followed that set with 5 minutes rest before doing 6*200 step down with 200 jogged recoveries like a few weeks ago.
For whatever reason these felt harder than a few weeks ago, but they were still pretty good for me. 40.45, 41.56, 38.65, 37.35, 35.92, 34.72
Coach wants me to focus on getting up on my toes, I tried to do it during the mile repeats last night but just couldn't get a feel for it at that pace. It feels like I can only get up if I am running under 5:40 pace, and then I can only sustain that strike for 200 meters or so. In other words I basically have to feel like I am sprinting in order to really get the fore foot strike. I'm just going off of still shot photos but it looks to me like I am over striding a little bit, or my foot is striking in front of my hip rather than below it. Though my friends all mentioned at Hyde Park Blast that they thought it was interesting how many steps I take, they felt I had pretty short strides and a high cadence. I'm thinking I will add some single leg jump roping to my routine and see if that helps! I'm definitely still a work in progress!
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