I ran 5 x 200m today after running a 4 mile warm up in just over 30 minutes. I gave myself 100m recovery in 60 seconds between the first 4 repeats, and then gave myself a longer recovery before running the fifth repeat. The goal was to simulate running an 800m in approximately 2:00, so goal pace for the 200's was 30 seconds. My reasoning is that if I can teach myself to run comfortably at a 4:00 mile pace, then I should be able to transfer that speed to distances longer than 400m. So, my goal was to not only run the 200's in 30 seconds, but to relax while doing so. Times were 31s, 30s, 31s, 31s for the first 4 repeats. I simply mispaced the first repeat, as the effort was pretty easy. During the third and fourth repeats I hit 100m in 15.xx seconds, but would have needed to speed up just a little in order to finish under 31s. I ended up focusing more on not putting forth too much effort, and less on staying at goal pace, so these repeats ended up being slower. After the fourth repeat I took a longer recovery, running 500m plus walking around for a couple minutes, before running the final repeat. The goal for the final repeat was to run all out, and see how fast I could go after running the other repeats. On top of this, I was doing wall sits earlier in the morning to try and strengthen my quads, so my quads were not 100% from a power standpoint. When I started the final repeat I ended up starting off too slow, because I was worried about fading over the final 50m. At 100m I really turned it on, and at the finish I felt like I could maintain the speed I was going for at least another 100m, and possible longer. Time for the final repeat was 29.5s. I am not sure how much faster I could have gone if I would have just started off faster. The strange thing about the last 200 I ran was that by the end I felt like I was moving my legs pretty quick, and I had a good turnover, but I seemed unable to really put enough force into the ground to get moving fast. It felt like I had deactivated the fast twitch muscle fibers in my legs, from running the other 4 repeats, and I was trying to sprint using my slow twitch fibers. Obviously this is not entirely the case, as I gave myself ample recovery for my fast twitch fibers to be ready to go, but there may be a degree of truth to the thought. I also really felt like I was getting nothing from my quads, as normally my quads will burn when I am trying to sprint, whereas today I didn't really feel anything. I guess ultimately that is what I want, as I am a distance runner, and the faster I can go on slow twitch fibers the higher the likelihood that I will be able to maintain that speed over longer and longer distances. I finished by running a cool down at just under 8:00 pace to finish 11 miles for the run. PM: 5 miles in about 39:30, running most of it on the grass barefoot.
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