Summer Rain

Yesterday I pulled into the parking lot at the track where my running group meets and was greeted by large dark clouds. 

I am a fan of running in the rain - when it is warm. And yesterday was a pretty warm day with lots of humidity.  But the rain never came - those big clouds just rolled right past and only dropped a sprinkle of rain.

After an easy 2 mile warm up, the running group met to go over the workout and then split into pace groups.  Since I am still in recovery mode, I was just planning on an easy run but the coach called me over to have a chat.  He said to add some 400m repeats at tempo pace to give the legs a feel for a bit of speed.

I was slightly apprehensive since I wasn't planning on doing any speed work until next week but I thought I would give it a try.  The first one was tough, but I just focused on increased the pace to something that was semi close to tempo pace.  With each repeat the speed became a little bit easier.

In the end I did 4x400m at tempo pace.  My tempo pace is still about 7:06/mile and the 400s were pretty close.

400m Paces - 7:27, 7:18, 6:53 (downhill...weeee), 7:03

I think this was exactly what my legs needed. A little bit of speed but nothing crazy or too intense.  Next week my coach said to increase the amount of 400s.  An easy gradual increase back into tempo and speed work.  Sounds like a pretty good plan to me!