Quarter Pacing (Or Lack thereof)

For the life of me I cannot pace 400s on the track. We have gotten in the (bad) habit of running fast on the front 200 of almost all our intervals the past few years and I just cannot get a feel for the proposed pace to really nail it every time.

Since we raced Sunday and it was (once again) unbearably hot at the track last night we had 12 quarters followed by an 800 last night. Nothing too fast, just a workout to focus on pacing.

Goal was 3 sets of 89 (10k pace), 86 (5k pace), 86, 82 (3k pace) with 1:00 rests between each quarter. Followed up by 90 seconds rest and an 800 at 5k pace (2:52)

I didn't hit a single quarter or the 800 at the correct pace and I never ran the first 200 slower than 43 on the 89s, or 41 on the 86s, or 39 on the 82s. I knew the point of the workout was pace and to feel it, but I just could not settle in on the front 200 and would have to jog the last few steps of the 400 to even come close to the desired goal. I never felt like I was straining, I just couldn't run the right paces, my "feel" for the pace just wasn't there.

88.55, 82.83, 84.87, 79.46, 87.99, 83,32, 85.09, 80.49, 88.41, 84.10, 83.98, 78.28, 2:46.90

I am not sure why I struggle with this. Clearly I can run evenly paced miles in longer repeats and events, why I can't nail a pace for 400 meters is beyond me.

2 comments:

Janet Edwards said...

Well at least you were not struggling with not running fast enough! Way to get through yet another hot track workout!

E-Speed said...

Thanks girl! That is how I saw it too, at least I was running too fast rather than too slow and felt good. But it would be nice to save the fast efforts for a night when coach asks me to kill it :)