Trackwork 10,000m

My first training today! I was so excited, yet nervous. Track work. Oh my, I was tentative about speedwork, not my most desired state of activity. At 530pm, I was hungry and stuffed myself with some sandwiches and chicken pie. Gosh, hope I would not get stitches later. I drove to the CCAB tracks. Hmmm, would have to find a better route, it took me 20min to get there. I saw Kumaran at the tracks too! He was there with his colleagues preparing for a company run meet or something. I started on my warmup jog, and bumped into Evelyn and Peggy. Great, now I had some company.

Training plan: 3,000m at 5:30min pace, 3-4 sets, consistently at 100m/33sec and 400m/2min 12sec. Ok I could manage that, I thought to myself. Since I had no idea what pace that was, oh heck, just dived right in. :)

It turned out pretty survivable. KM paced me for the first set and I gradually found the rhythm. Going round and round the track was a challenge, together with staying focused on the pace, plus checking the timing every 100m, 200m, 400m and 1km to ensure that I was right on target - not too fast nor slow, and still having to count circles. Every once a while I lost count, and KM would do a mental reverse calculation based on elapsed time and confirm the number of rounds. He tried to explain the calculations, but obviously I had no spare bandwidth to absorb the numbers. Haha. I finished the set on target timing, panting and slightly breathless, and wondered how I could complete 3-4 sets.

We rested 3min precisely, than started off on the next set of 3,000m. The 2nd set seemed harder. KM ran alongside for a few laps then went off to work with Eve and Peggy. My watch was accidentally set on the wrong function and I could not take my own timings. Damn. Nevermind, just continued running and running. At least I remembered the number of laps, and finshed as targeted too. 3min rest, still hard breathing.

KM decided to extend the final 3rd set to 4km. The last set actually felt the easiest of all, perhaps I was attuned to the pace and rhythm by now. There was a sense of happy achievement when I managed to reach the 100m cone each time exactly on 33sec, and 200m around 1:05/ 1:06min. Alas, there was a group of guys doing interval workouts on the track and they ran abreast and blocked up 5 lanes! I had to weave my way through the pack, then they picked up speed and I felt like I was being attacked by a school of fish from behind. Then they slow jogged, I weaved past, they picked up.... Repeated that for a good 400m while I was trying to maintain a constant pace, so irritating! The last set went well, especially the last 1,200m. I could go below the target pace (2:07/ 2:08/ 2:10) and still felt comfortable. But I held back, aim was to complete on pace, not chiong.

Happy to have lasted 5:30min pace for 10km total. I suspect that the last time I held the pace for prolonged distance was last year. So tired that I went home, grabbed a quick dinner, and flopped on the bed. Must try to get more sleep everyday. Sprayed my lovely Body Shop Deep Sleep mist on the pillows - ahhh, heavens - and promptly knocked out.