Boston is back and back to the track

Tracking Marathon friends on BAA.org

Today's run (track intervals): 
6 x 400's plus 1 mile warm up/cool down

Yesterday was a big day for running, with the 118th Boston Marathon taking place (thankfully) without incident. Both SIOR and TPP's sister ran great races, and it was fun to watch their progress using the tracker on the BAA website. How perfect that Meb Keflezighi won the men's race. I'll never look at Skechers the same way again. I was disappointed when Shalane Flanagan dropped back after leading for so long, but she scored an American course record while finishing seventh overall.

The marathon would have been great inspiration for a Monday run, but I held to my rest day to ensure I'd recover from Sunday's long distance. Speed work was on the calendar today, and since the schools are closed until tomorrow, I went over to the track to run intervals. I've done weekly speed workouts all throughout my half marathon training cycle, but I hadn't done a single set on the track until today.

The temperature was 55° when I arrived at the high school. Although I was wearing shorts, I was concerned that having two top layers would cause me to overheat. With the 6 MPH wind, it felt chilly enough to keep them both on the entire time. The high school cross country team was assembled at the southern end of the track infield and I wondered if my workout would happen alongside a crowd of much faster runners.

My HRM now takes 5 minutes to sync

It turned out that I didn't need to share the track at all. The coach was having the team run laps barefoot on the grass, first slowly, then at speed. While that was happening, I started my workout with two laps around the track at around 8:50/mile followed by 6 x 400's at 8:00/mile. I finished with a half mile cool-down that I ran at a mid-9 pace.

It was good tactical workout. I probably could have added another two quarters, but I wanted to keep it light today. I'll try to cover much more distance tomorrow. With the race on Sunday, I'm not sure what to do about my weekend long run.