track thursdays!

joined the NVRC for my first group track workout today at lunch. a nice 1.5mile warm up to go over to the track. after arriving and stretching a little, marty announced that we will do relay pyramids. "what is a relay pyramid?" you say...basically, you team up and trade off running different length intervals. marty and i were partners so it went as follows. M runs 200, R runs 400, M runs 600, R runs 800, M runs 1000, R runs 1000, M runs 800, R runs 600, M runs 400, R runs 200. being the slowpokes of the group it seemed like a good idea to partner with marty but the catch was that I ran my final interval completely alone on the track with every other person standing at the finish line waiting for me. thankfully i still felt kicky at that point and power sprinted the whole thing. i know that people actually do this workout on their own and that seems crazy to me. last week when i ran those 400's i basically did equal distance on and off. this was pretty different. on the recovery people basically stood around and waited (or when your partner had an uneven distance, shuffled across the track to the other side to await their arrival). so the total distance covered was relatively shorter than with an active recovery. it definitely allowed me to go faster than i would have otherwise. watching speedsters flying past me and around the track at different angles didn't hurt either. humiliation is as good a motivator as any ;-)    but really, this is a super nice group of people. meira, a freakishly fast distance runner, happens to also be super friendly and cheered me on every time i went by her (her rest interval was my work interval). i need to pay more attention to the nice things people say so i can cheer similarly. i'm not very good at that at this point.

workout was as follows:
1.5 mile warmup  12 minutes
400m        1:36 (6:24)
rest
800m        3:24 (6:34)
rest
1000m      4:17 (6:37) 
rest
600m        2:34 (6:31) 
rest
200m        :32  (4:21) 
3.1mi cooldown jog with a cramp most of the way. at the most painful 9:45 pace i have ever experienced. but smiling the whole way.

for the first 10 seconds of that last 200 i felt like this: