8 x Mile...

Durning my lunch break today I started thinking about the afternoon workout. My original plan was to do some faster work to feel quick going into the New England meet this Sunday. As I sat with my peanut butter and jelly I decided that I wanted to hit the longer stuff hard so I decided to jump in with both feet and do 8 x mile with 400-meters rest. When Fyffe picked me up I asked if he minded shifting his original plan of 4-6 x mile to a longer workout. Fyffe is always up for that sort of action so we were ready to rock. Justin and I figured that if we ran 5:10 pace that we would stimulate the right system and get a solid mileage total for the afternoon.

Fyffe and I met up with the usual cast of characters at the bank at 3:15 and headed out for our standard warm up. After a few striders Justin, Andy, James, and I got into the mile repeats. Greg, Boj, and Jeff opted for something shorter heading into the last race of the undercover season. The workout went much better than expected and I felt stronger and stronger as we progressed. For some reason I had a lingering fear that I was going to fall apart late in the game but I got in a groove and produced a solid effort. 5:01, 5:06, 5:01, 5:04, 5:03, 5:00, 4:56, 4:52. On the last repeat I started to get a little bit sick of the grind so I ran hard for the last 300-meters to finish things off. I had a funny thought following the third interval. I had already done a 3 x mile workout and I still had to do the longest mile repeat workout of my life! It was a funny feeling which probably led to some of the anxiety I was feeling late in the game.

Justin, Andy, James and I had an awesome bonkapalozza on the cool down. I had a pretty great punch drunk feeling and started to feel a little loopy over the last mile but I managed to get home. Justin and I knocked back some cream sodas that Pete Najam had left from the Super Bowl to get out blood sugar back on track. Overall we got in a great workout that was much faster than expected with 17 miles of volume.

Next up is a mile 3k double Sunday at Harvard.

Mark