I mentioned in my last blog post that the WODs at the gym recently have included a lot of squatting. While this is true, they have also included a lot of running, particularly 400 meter repeats. My trend with those workouts had been two rounds of solid running followed by three rounds of slow jogging, if it even could be called jogging. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to hit up Endurance again on Thursday.
Flounder and Laura A were at the track once again, joined by Kevin, Brian, and Mr. Intensity. What was on tap for the workout? A 400 meter time trial for starters. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I mean, it was a relief to hear that we weren't doing a mile time trial, because I would not have fared very well there. At the same time, I started thinking about how important it was to be able to carry your speed in a 400 meter time trial. Last week, during our first 200 meter sprint, I was able to put in a solid sprint for about, say, 180 meters before hitting the wall and coasting in at the end. I needed a little more stamina than that.
Tim P put us through a series of drills before letting us know the time trial would be in 3 minutes. Time to strategize. I wanted to treat this time trial a bit like the 800 meter time trial from the week before in that I wanted to have a little something left in the tank for the final push. So I decided to feel out the first 100 meters or so and go from there. When Tim sent us on our way, it was Laura, Kevin, and Mr. Intensity taking off like a shot. Brian led the trailing group that included Flounder and myself. My initial reaction was that the lead group was going way too fast. Not for their abilities. For my ability.
As we rounded the turn and headed to the 200 meter mark, I decided it was time to accelerate. I passed Brian as we came off the turn and focused on narrowing the gap to the lead group over the final 200 meters. Except the lead group wasn't slowing down. I tried to get up on my toes to sprint, but my legs weren't getting the message. I did keep chugging along the final turn and finished pretty solidly, although I had no clue as to how fast I had run prior to hearing Tim give me my time. Final time: 1:15. Not my best performance, but considering this was only my 2nd Endurance class of the year, it was tough to be disappointed with my time. Laura took over the top spot in the gym for the ladies with a time of 1:07, while Mr. Intensity just missed grabbing the 3rd spot in the gym for men with his time of 1:09.
Because there was a high school football game that night, we had to complete our workout across the street at the baseball field. We would be running three sets of sprints. In each set, we would go all out for 45 seconds, then jog back from wherever we stopped, before immediately going back into the next run of 30 seconds, followed by another jog, and then a final 10 second sprint. At the completion of each set, we would get a three minute break. Tim would alert us as to when time was up for each run by blowing a whistle.
There wasn't much change in how this played out as compared to the time trial. On the 45 second runs, the same pack of Laura, Kevin, and Mr. Intensity would pull away. I tried to keep it together for 45 seconds, but it was more like 25 seconds of hard running and then desperately trying to hold on from there. Running in the grass was a bit more draining than running on the track. Even the 30 second runs were no picnic. We would be in the vicinity of center field when I'd start thinking...
The only run I could seem to handle was the 10 second sprint. Unlike in the time trial, I was able to get up on my toes. My first sprint wasn't so great, but my second attempt was better. And in the 3rd one, I was finally able to run faster than Mr. Intensity, although I may have tripped him during the run (it wasn't intentional, I swear!). As we walked back afterwards, he mentioned being two years away from the big 5-0. And that put things into perspective. That dude is killing it. There is no chance that I will be running anywhere near that fast when I'm 40, never mind 48.
Moral of the story: Mr. Intensity is a monster and I need some more Endurance work.
Headed over to the gym for a mini-strength session where I did my 6x2 back squat routine. Only 3 more sessions left! We will see if I can back squat 300 pounds next Thursday. The only other thing I worked on was pull-ups. Part of the WOD scheduled for that day was to find your max number of unbroken pull-ups. I had done some sets of 4 while in the annex recently, except they weren't very smooth. But it made me realize that I could probably hang on to the bar and eek out a few extra reps, in the same way that I hung on earlier in the year to get 10 toes-to-bar and win my ice cream bet with Jill C. So I got up on the bar and managed 6 reps before things got dicey. That was when I re-gripped the bar, before kipping another rep. I came back to a dead hang, then got one more kip in to bring my total to 8. I really wanted to get to 10, but it wasn't happening. And since 5 was my previous best, I was pretty excited about getting 8.
There was time to do more, but I was running on fumes. I decided a good night's rest would help me more than practicing anything else.
Friday preview: One last WOD before a rest day on Saturday. And it would be a toughie.
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