Getting it done

My weekly trip to the track fell through due to other commitments so my new training window was 8:30pm. It was raining and there was a bit of wind about, plus I was going to have to try and run some intervals under street lights. Any sane person would have pulled the pin.

During a 2.2km warm-up, I decided to run some 400's. As part of the warm-up I marked out a section of the N17 that looked to be about 400m (with lampposts as my start and end point). After a few strides it was time to get this over with.

The first effort was a feeler (running towards the city into a wind). The time was 84 seconds so clearly it was more than 400m. At least that is what I was telling myself. I continued on changing direction after each effort with the luxury of one minute walk/slow shuffle recovery. Coming back I was 81 seconds (wind on the back). That pattern continued throughout the set of 16 with me running the return leg slightly quicker. The wind picked up a little throughout which made the outward section tougher. Looking at the times I averaged 82 seconds and the effort level felt like I was running at 3 minute km pace so I guess the actual distance to be closer to 450m. So clearly I have no idea how to mark out a 400m distance.

I finished up with a 5km warm-down. All up 14.4km for the session and lots of strange looks from other users of the footpath...