Another gorgeous morning run. Sunrise is getting later though, which is a bummer, but we still have a couple good months of awesome light mornings left. Warmed up for 6 miles with Eric W. this morning, and then hit the track for a few short intervals at mile goal pace - 4:40. I did 4 x 100 to get the turnover going, and surprisingly felt good starting out right on pace at 16 and 17 for each one. Then I did an 800, a 400, and a 200. My main goal was to run an 800 at race pace to get a feel for it. And wow...I got a feel for it. And the feeling wasn't all that amazing. Meaning after the first 400 meters at 69 seconds I started to feel a healthy burning sensation throughout my body and could tell I was taking myself to a place where I have not been before, or in a long long time. That second lap of the 800 felt steady and controlled, but also, kind of scared me for the mile. Because if it hurts like that in only the 2nd lap, what am I going to feel for laps 3 and 4? Its kind of unsettling, but kind of exciting also. I'm intrigued to find out what it feels like to try and hold that pace for the full mile. And I'm pretty certain its going to hurt. And for some reason I don't think I fully understand, I am looking forward to that with some excitement. I did the 800 in 2:21. So pretty close to right on pace. Then I rested for 3 or 4 minutes. Then I ran a 400 in 65 seconds. Huh...that was faster than planned, but felt easy relative to the 2:21 800. Then after some rest I did a 28 second 200. Still not sure why I feel compelled to run 200's so fast, because I can't even come close to holding that pace for any longer distances intervals. But for some reason I gravitate toward that speed on the 200's. After that, I'm not feeling all that confident in being able to hit a 4:40 mile. But I'm going to give it my best shot, because I do believe its possible with the adrenaline of race day, and I'm curious to find out if it is. I'm fairly certain I can run a 4:50 right now, and I could definitely run a 5:00. But 4:40, based on the paces of my workouts, seems to be pushing the edge a bit for me. Which I guess is why I'm motivated by it. We'll find out soon enough. I believe I could get my mile time down below 4:20 with another year or so of consistent training for it. Not sure if I'm motivated enough to do that type of training or not. But I do enjoy getting at least one flat speed session in each week, even when training for longer distances. And I plan to continue that. Speaking of longer distances, I'm also planning on running a marathon this weekend up Kings peak and back in Utah. So I'll be racing twice this week, and my pace for the 2nd should be close to double my pace for the first. Hopefully an all out mile effort doesn't zap me too much for the marathon two days later. How bad could it be though right? It's less than 5 minutes of running after all. | 