K9Runner

In the spirit of Festivus, I set out early this morning to complete my annual Feats of Strength on the track. My original plan was to see if I could survive up to 60 400m repeats or run as many as I could until failure – whichever came first.

Unfortunately it didn’t go quite as well as I hoped. All of my usual running partners stayed home to sleep in so I was stuck running these solo. And the weather didn’t cooperate dropping to the low 20′s.

I broke up the intervals in sets of 4 with a 200m recovery in between intervals and a 400m recover in between sets.

I started out a little tired from a big mileage weekend and the cold made it hard to get going at full speed. But I still managed to run the first 16 at a decent pace averaging 1:25, 1:24, and 1:25 for the first 3 sets. On the next 3 sets, I slowed down a bit to average 1:27, 1:27, and 1:28. After the 24th repeat, my legs were pretty shot and I averaged 1:34 and 1:35 for the final 2 sets.

After the 32nd interval, I decided to try to take a short break to try to warm up in my car. I went out to attempt a few more repeats but only managed to jog around the track once before I was shivering again and decided to call it quits.

Aside slowing down considerably, my legs really didn’t feel that bad. So I’ll have to schedule a rematch with the track sometime later this spring when it’s a bit warmer.