Race pace and speedwork

"This is the best I've ever felt!" I said to Ric after finishing the 800 meter race. "I'm not even breathing hard".

I've been doing one mile training with very little faster paced speedwork.  We went down to the Air Force Academy yesterday where I intended to race 800 and 400 meters... both to be first forays into the faster than one mile realm.  What would all the sprint strength and flexibility work do to performance? A big unknown.

 I thought all kinds of things were revealing themselves based on this "easy" 800... sprint strength and flexibility effects, my aerobic base was sky high, I was 100% healthy, all of the above. Then the real reason became clear when I got the finishing time... I ran somewhat slow!  2:23.75..About  4 seconds slower than I thought I'd done, a lot for 800 meters.   Oh that tricky 800. Without racing this beast for awhile, the ability to nail a good pace vanishes for me. A very weak sense of how to run it remains.  And its over so quick adjustments are tricky. And at the AFA its a 3- lap race (6 laps to the mile) which is way too unusual to put numbers into in real time.  So I roughly ran a "mile" effort for a half mile.

I was fortunate to run with teammates Mike Preigh, Bobby Fischer and Ric himself. I absorbed as much of their excitement and enthusiasm as possible and was able to work with Mike for some of the race.  All were happy campers afterwords.

 Upon further reflection, I'm still all excited about the results and optimistic about the sprint strength and flexibility stuff.  I did feel very good, held form and generally felt very "resiliant" in racing yesterday. With my newly born foot strike (all energy in the "down" instead of the "up") I think good things will come at just the right time (namely at Nationals at end of March).  I talked to great 800/400 runner M45-49 Mike Wolf (2:13 yesterday, and 56.in the 400) and he is very into this "energy into pushing off" notion.

Once we add in faster than mile pace speedwork, it sure can't hurt performance in the 800 (and the mile!). Even more encouraging along these same lines, I stayed around and ran  the 400 in 60.4, and felt good the entire distance.  With speedwork, maybe I can chop off a second or two and STILL feel good the whole way in the 4 (and run a much faster 800!).

Can't wait to bring on the speed!