Rubber Side Down

6 x 800m of Fun!

We ran our 800m intervals this morning. With people on the DL, on vacation or just plain busy, we're re-syncing. Dayle's done them several times, so has Stefan. Today's experience was a little different from last week for me. First, I didn't have a hamburger the night before; +1 bonus point for me.

2nd and more to the point, I kept thinking about what Sissie had been saying about running faster by pushing off harder, and Stefan easily beating my by a 100 meters and not being out of breath, but he said his legs hurt. Hmmm, my legs don't really hurt. How can I get my legs to hurt? Push off harder maybe?

So that's what I did, concentrating on using my quadraceps to really push forward, and making sure I didn't overstride and that my feet landed underneath me, leg slightly bent, weight landing more on the middle front of my foot.

Net result: 3:48 for 800m on my last lap, vs 3:44 last week. The difference? My steps per minute were lower somewhat since I was going farther with each step, my breathing was a smidgen easier through most of the 800m, and my legs were a lot more tired. Even though I wasn't gasping as much for air this time, I do feel like I worked harder.

2 laps in lane 7 at 3:48 = 6:52 pace.

Now the question is can I hold sub-7:00 for a whole mile. And how about my potential 5k time?

posted by Patrick el Coyote @ 2:41 PM