Went to the track today to do an old school strength workout. Back in the day, runners ran on the track a lot more than they do now, but they didn't always just do fast speedwork. On days where today's runners might opt for a tempo on the roads, the 'old timers' would do slower intervals with very brief recoveries. Emil Zatopek was probably the pioneer for this sort of training, often doing as much as 40 x 400 in a single session! With that in mind, one of my favorite 8K/10K workouts is 16-20 x 400 w/ 100 jog recoveries @ 10K effort. You get in tune with race pace without killing yourself, but because the recoveries are so brief, your heart rate stays up. With today's temps already over 80 degrees at 10:30am when I started my warm up, I was thankful to get the brief recoveries while still getting in some quality work. I hit all my reps like clockwork in 91-92, which was a good sign considering the conditions. Probably worth a few ticks faster per rep on a 50-60 degree day. I obviously have work to do, but this week has been better than last week and I felt stronger today than I did on last week's tempo. I'm still thinking June 16 for my first post-injury race.
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