Interval Training Gone Dumb

I jacked up my interval training this morning almost before it could begin. I was planning on doing 10x400, but I wasn’t prepared, not for the cold, not for the training itself. First of all it was 29 degrees, probably less on the river. My plan was to warm up in my sweatshirt and then take it off to do my session. That was just a dumb idea. Wet wind blows off the river almost constantly. Wet wind isn’t conducive to anything other than freezing things to death. I forgot that I’m not a world class athlete and ran the first 400 flat out. I ran it in 58 seconds. That’s more than 15 miles an hour. It’s 15 seconds slower than world record pace for the 400m. It’s about 10 seconds slower than world record pace for the 1500m, aka the metric mile. It’s about 17 seconds faster than world record pace for the 5000m. So if I was representing LJland in the summer Olympics, and you were watching the 5000m at 3:30 in the morning, you would have seen me in the lead after the first lap – by a lot. Of course, I would have stopped and made sure to keep my lungs inside my chest, while everyone else ran another 11 laps. I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. The first 30 seconds felt great, but then I couldn’t breathe. I finished the ¼ mile because I didn’t know what else to do. I’m sure the wind off the river and my gasping gave me pneumonia. I looked down at my watch, which had just beeped telling me I had gone the specified distance, and saw that I was running at a 3:52 mile pace. If I could keep that up I would finish the River Run in about 36 minutes. I tried to run a second interval doing the same thing. I quit about 100 meters in. I chalked up my “bad” performance to not getting enough sleep, the cold, being a wimp, and not getting enough breakfast. It wasn’t until I was inside the Y and about to start my pull-ups that I remembered I wanted to run my intervals faster than an 8 minute mile pace and not faster than a 4 minute mile pace. I got through my calisthenics and did 5 miles on the dreadmill, but it’s amazing the stuff that can happen when you’re not focused.