Currying favor with Nike

Last week: 53 miles
Monday: 6 miles
Tuesday: 4x800, 400 recovery, 6.25 total

Feel like you're stuck in a rut? Looking to spice up your running life?
A day at the track may be just what the doctor ordered!

I had a solid week of running last week, but stiffness in my right calf
kept the pace easy. Afer finally getting above 50 miles for the week,
I'm going to cut back a little bit and include some speed in the next
few weeks as Broad Street approaches. Today was going to be a 7 mile
tempo run, but as I got out of bed I was itching for a little more speed.
I hadn't been to the track in 9 months, and I decided to swap Friday's
planned workout for today's.

I shuffled out the door just before 6 and made my way down Grant St
toward the dirt track at MLK middle school, 1.75 miles away. I was
still feeling a bit of lameness in my calf, but dutiful icing has kept
it at bay, and I wasn't worried about hurting myself. The quads were a
bit stiff as well from some hard downhill running on Sunday. I wasn't
sure what was going to happen at the track, but the plan was 4x800,
trying for negative splits on each pair of laps, at about 3k-5k pace. In
other words, something like 1:32-1:28 to hit 3 minutes per 800.

At the track, there were a few walkers and joggers doing laps in the
dark. I found a water spot on the ground to use as a start/stop and
took off.

Coming through the first lap, I tried to look at my watch but missed the
light. It was too dark to see, so I just kept doing what I was doing
with no real idea of how fast I was going. I came through the second
lap and checked the watch: 2:45. OK, the plan was out the window. The
next three went down in 2:48-2:49-2:52, with slow 400s in between. I
actually did manage the negative splits on the last 2, by 5 and 2
seconds respectively. I'm pretty happy with the speed, and it will give
me something to work with over the next couple of weeks as I sharpen up
for BSR. Maybe next week I'll actually know what I'm doing.