Coach Tim has time trials for the mile run, the 800 meter run, and the 400 meter run every six weeks. That works out to three time trials for each distance over the course of the Endurance season (generally April-October). The time trials take place in consecutive weeks, so when you hear Tim say that the mile time trial is coming up, you can mark your calendar with what we'll be doing the following two weeks in class. Or at least part of what we'll be doing in that class. Thursday marked the end of our second set of time trials as 13 of us would be making a mad dash around the track to find out our 400 meter time.
When I arrived at the track, the parking lot was mostly empty and there were balloons tied to the gates. That was strange. Even stranger was that the inside of the track was a ghost town. Class was supposed to begin in two minutes and I was the first one here? Seemed unlikely. Maybe class had been cancelled and I didn't know about it. I remained confused until I saw a group of folks from my gym sitting on the bleachers near the baseball field. Guess we were doing a grass workout today instead of the 400 meters.
That wasn't exactly correct either. The AAU (an acronym that no one could decipher) was holding an event at the track. We couldn't do our entire workout there, but we could sneak over and get the 400 meter time trial in before coming back to the baseball field for the remainder of our workout. We were going to warm up over on the grass, then do the time trial, before finishing up with some timed runs around the baseball field. The timed runs are never fun, especially not on the grass. I actually think I prefer to do them uphill then on the grass. I'll explain why a little later on.
First up was the time trial and my strategy this time around was simple: go very hard early and hope to hold on at the end. When we did this six weeks ago, it was held in rainy conditions. I decided to trail right behind Laura A and John McHugh, but I wasn't able to go by them in the final sprint, finishing with a time of 1:14. My best 200 meter time was comparable to anyone in the class, so I thought I should just go nuts right from the start and see if I could maintain my speed for another 200 meters (or at least not completely fall apart). I would probably need to line up in the front row and closer to the inside than I normally do in order to make this work. Sounded like a decent plan in my head. But then Tim began stressing to us that we didn't want to go all out right at the beginning of this run. It was like he had heard me uttering my plan out loud and was now shooting it down in front of the class. That wasn't good. I was suddenly undecided about how I wanted to do this. Based on this picture of us lined up at the start, I guess I had reverted to plan B:
Closer to the inside, but definitely in the back row
Alex and John were in front of me and Justin was slightly in front of me and directly to my inside. There was a good chance they were all going to go hard from the start, so I figured I could trail right behind them for the first 100-200 meters and then try to unleash my kick earlier than normally I do. I kept my fingers crossed that I wouldn't get caught behind anyone and have to swing out really wide on the turns to try and sprint past them.
Tim blew the whistle and John and Matt C rocketed out to the lead. That was my plan! Damn it all! Should have stuck with my gut. The first 100 meters is straight, so I used that first section to move my way through the crowd. I moved up alongside of Alex and then passed her as we went into the turn. I peeked to my inside and had cleared her, so I moved over to lane one as I finished off the first 200 meters. At this point, I knew there was almost no chance that I could catch the two frontrunners. The question was could I hold off the cavalry that I figured was lurking right behind me. As we ran down the back straightaway, Alex moved up outside of me and began to pass me. I had to go now. I wasn't sure I could sprint from here to the finish, but if I let one person go by, who knows how many would follow in the procession. I started pumping my arms like crazy to get back in front of Alex. We hit the final 100 meters and I was ahead of her. As I went around the turn, she had disappeared from my peripheral vision. That didn't mean that Justin or Luke or Borden or Ashley or Flounder wasn't about to reel me in before the finish line. I kept stomping around the turn, pumping my arms, trying to get to that finish line ASAP. During that final sprint, I even caught up to John a little bit. I crossed the line in third, not knowing how close the group behind me was. Final time: 1:12.
Here's the crazy thing: I wasn't all that happy when I heard my time. I had sprinted early. I had held off the cavalry charge. And yet my time was only 2 seconds better than last time. Bit of a bummer. Oh well. Next time I'm trying Matt and John's strategy of going hard right from the starting line.
We had some time to recover before the next phase of the workout, but honestly, I could have done it fresh and still struggled. I mentioned stomping around the turn on the final sprint of the 400 meters because I feel that is the best way to describe my running style. Some folks can glide around the track and make it look effortless. I drive my feet into the ground with as much force as possible in an effort to accelerate. That works well on the track. It works really well when I'm running uphill on a paved surface. It doesn't work so well on surfaces with some give in it. You know, like grass. The last time we did this workout on the baseball field, I tired out very quickly and I don't think we did a 400 meter time trial that day. So chances were this was going to be worse.
Each round of the timed runs included a 70 second run, a 35 second run, and a 15 second run with two and a half minutes rest in between. Tim wanted us to do two rounds followed by tabata sprints, which would be a four minute jog with 8 random sprints mixed in there. The initial 70 second run would let me know how difficult the rest of my day would be. Quick answer: very difficult. I kept hoping to hear the whistle letting me know the 70 seconds were up, but all we heard was Tim's encouragement to keep going. I ran around the entirety of the outfield before getting back to third base when Tim mercifully ended the run. We were supposed to jog back to the starting line near first base, but I walked most of the way back. I was tired already. I did a little better on the 35 second run, but as I neared the center field area I petered out again. I didn't even make it all the way through the 15 second run, but that was because I forgot that Tim was going to blow the whistle. He yelled "good, good" and my brain thought that was his way of saying that the 15 seconds were up. Or maybe I was just wishing that was the case.
The first 15 second sprint
When we returned for the start of the second round, Tim was way too happy. Then he let it slip that we were going to do three rounds of this rather than two. Borden was happy because we weren't going to do the sprint tabata at the end, but I'm not sure how happy the rest of us were. The highlight of the second round was the 35 second run as Flounder went all out, passing by everyone as we hit the center field area that seemed to mark the end of the middle run. It was impressive that he found another gear on that run and passed at least 6 people towards the end of it. The third round wasn't much different from the second except for the fact that I was slower and wishing I was doing anything else but running around that baseball field.
At least we were done! Or not. We must have finished before 6:26 because Tim decided there was still time for tabata sprints. (Sorry Borden!) Four more minutes of running around the baseball field. Tim was going to blow his whistle at various points of the run indicating that we needed to sprint until he blew the whistle again. There were going to be 8 sprints and a whole lot of slow jogging when we weren't sprinting. The highlight of this segment? That I was right back near the starting line when Tim told us the four minutes were up. Considering that as a win!
But wait, there's more! Alex, Matt, Jill Herman, Kris, and Ashley wanted to do some tabata planks so we went through 20 seconds of holding high planks, low planks, and both types of side planks twice with 10 seconds of rest between each hold. Then we left the baseball field. I swear. We didn't do anything else.
But wait, there's more! That was the last thing I did at the baseball field, but I drove over to the gym to get some double under work done. For the second Thursday in a row, a WOD filled with double unders was programmed and I was missing it to go to Endurance. This Thursday's workout included 500 double unders. Yes, you read that right. Five hundy. I had never done that many double unders in a workout and there was no chance of making it in time for the 6:30 class after everything that we had done at Endurance. So I went to the gym and made my way through 500 double unders without timing it. I had some decent sets along the way. Three times I did 29 in a row. There were a few other instances of more than 20 in a row. Not too shabby considering my legs were a bit worn out. Am I eager to do 500 double unders in a workout now? Can't say that I am. But I'm hoping this extra work will help me become more consistent when double unders pop up in future workouts.
Weekend preview: I woke up Friday morning and my body said "hell no", so it ended up being a day of rest. I'm sure I'll hit a 10am class on either Saturday or Sunday, as well as the special holiday workout for the 4th of July on Monday.
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