Interesting. Tonight was interval night at Harmon Playfield. Although the Fleet Feet group was gonna be there at 6, I went there straight from work and started at 5:30 because I figured my workout would take a lot longer than theirs (which it did). Warmed up with eight laps, then a mile at 10K pace, then a four-minute (1.5 lap) jog, then 8 X 400 at 3K pace with a minute-ish (200m) recovery, more or less, in between, all followed by two miles of cooldown. That adds up to 33 laps of a 400-meter track. Since 400 meters is like .246 miles, that should have been 8.20 miles. But the Garmin says 8.02, and to get even that I had to run most of it in lanes 2 and 3. Is that track short, or is my Garmin 5% off (or at least 5% off today)? Dunno. But 33 laps is 33 laps, and that's what I ran on a certified track, so I'm gonna go with the track, not the Garmin. Might have even run more than that due to going on the outer lanes.
Anyway, the pace it gave me for that first mile (or 0.97 anyway) was 7:14, but I ran the four laps in sub-7:00 total, which is about what I wanted. Then the 400s were 1:32, 1:38, 1:38, 1:36, 1:36, 1:37, 1:37 and 1:35. Darn near perfect, since my goal was to run them at about 6:40 mile pace.
Take it easy for the rest of the week, then open up a huge can of PR Saturday morning in Conway. That's the plan. Hopefully we won't have a repeat of last year's toad-strangling thunderstorm (pun intended), although a 40% chance of rain is in the forecast. | 