Speed Work

This evening was the first day of the Track Shack's speed training program, so I drove to meet the group near Lake Eola in Orlando. We were at a nearby middle school track. There were about two dozen others and everybody look excited to be there. As we milled around waiting to start several people said they had taken the program again, so it must be pretty good to draw repeat customers.

After a quick intro, we went for an easy mile loop through a neighborhood. This section of Orlando has cobblestone streets, which I hate running on in the evening. Lighting wasn't good and there is the occasional small hole or protruding brick to watch for.

When we returned to the middle school, we did 4 strides across the field. The strides were: start out easy, accelerate in the middle, slow down at the end. After more stretching, we grouped up for our mile time trial.

The program will divide us into two groups depending on how fast we are, but at the same time the leaders said we could join either one depending on what kind of workouts we want to do. If I understood correctly, one group would just do hills and tempo workouts, while the other would alterate with track workouts. We'll see what they say on Thursday when we are to do a different workout including a 440 and 220 time trial.

The first group was for 7:30 and faster miles, so I joined them and we started off. They called times for each lap, which were 1:30, 3:15, 4:58, and 6:37 for me. I'm pretty happy with my 6:37 mile! My lap splits worked out to 1:30, 1:45, 1:43, and 1:39 which shows I started out too fast but was able to keep a consistent pace for the last 3 laps.

After the first group finished up, the next group went out so I stretched more and talked to a few others. Several of us decided to run around nearby Lake Eola before heading off, so I did that too.

All in all, it was a fun workout and I'm looking forward to the rest of the program.