I ran my first track workout last night at the Red Hook track. The track itself is in remarkably good condition considering it is open to the public at all hours and located deep in Red Hook. It is surrounded by warehouses and the BQE overpass and heavily used by serious and casual runners. When we were there at least one other team was practicing,   It is about as urban an environment as you are going to find for a track, just about the exact opposite from my wilderness running inVermontthis past weekend.

 

The workout itself was dead simple – a two mile warm up jog to the track from the park, and then 12 x 400 meters with 90 second rest.  Coach broke us into two groups, the very fast, and the rest of us. I was obviously not in the very fast group. My group did the repeats with the goal of hitting a time somewhere between 90 and 95 seconds for each 400. I have no idea what the goal pace was for the fast group. I took the first one too fast, coming in at 1:24; The next three I hit at just around 1:35 – 1:37. Only three laps in and hurting, I was sure I was not going to be able to keep this up. But I grinded it out, one lap at a time, and did the remaining laps all right around 1:34.

 

The purpose of the work-out was to understand pacing and begin to get a sense of what the effort for a sub 20 5k would feel like. I’ll tell you what it feels like – it feels like pain. Between sets, no one spoke. We just gasped, drank water, and walked back and forth. The experience reminded me of swim practice in high school – the pain in the lungs, the drive to finish the work out, the camaraderie between the runners. I loved it. By the final couple of sets I was hurting, especially in my legs. I did a lot of climbing on my weekend long run, and the quads were sore before I even started this work out. By the time it was over, I could barely walk. But I did more than walk, I ran the 2.5 miles home feeling like I was really, finally, getting somewhere with this running thing.