800m Time Trial-
So for the fun of it, I did an 800m time trial yesterday. It wasn’t anything I had planned or even specifically trained for. It was just a kind of spur of the moment thing, as evidenced by the fact that I ran 8+ miles in the morning and did a mini fartlek the day before. Needless to say I wasn’t exactly fresh for this.
Anyways, I needed to test my new allergy and asthma medication sometime, so I figured yesterday was as good a day as any. Instead of treating it like a race, I just did a 1mile jog, then a few stretches and a couple strides and was ready to go. I had a two person crowd during the warm up (two older guys trotting around the track) but unfortunately they left before the big race commenced. So I had a capacity crowd of zero watching me. To further hype me up, their was a nice strong wind down the backstretch.
Throw in all of this and I almost bagged the thing, but decided I’d go out and if I came through the first 400 and felt decent, I’d continue. If I felt like crap, I’d just bag it. After standing on the starting line for a minute or two, hoping that the wind would die down, I decided to get this thing over with.
Not having done much work at 800m pace lately, my first 200m was WAY too fast. I didn’t split it off but I saw 26-27 when I crossed. So I figure 26 high-27 low, but the problem was this was INTO the wind. To compensate for this, I slacked off the pace and tried to relax. I came through the 400 right at 55, and made the decision to continue for now. The next 200m sucked big time. I backed off WAY too much and the wind threw off my pace judgement. I threw in a nice 29sec 200 to come by 600 in 1:24.2. At this point, I thought, well I’m either going to die in and run 1:54 and know I suck, or I could kick it in and run okay. I ended up choosing the later option w/ 120m to go and split 28.3 for the last 200 to run 1:52.5 for the 800.
I think I had another gear there if someone was there pushing me. Also, I lost too much into the wind from 400 to 600m. I’m not sure exactly what to think of this. It’s my second fastest 800m ever (which isn’t saying much b/c my 800m pr sucks) in pretty crappy conditions, by myself, at the end of a 90mi week.
The race itself felt pretty good. I recovered quickly. I could feel a burning type sensation in my throat and feel it start to shut down a little. So still got to correct that problem.
So, what to do now. I think I’m going to give a rested 800m a go, since I’m close to my PR. Might as well salvage the season and get an 800m pr out of it. I’ll probably need to do a 1500m to test the medications to see if they work in that race, because that’s what’s been giving me the most problems. Who knows where though. I might just do another time trial or something.
Oh ya, I won the race too, competition was fierce.
