Workout 3x(5x300m) w/1min & 3-5min @70 pace

Derrick – 49.3/47.2/49.2/51.8/51.5, 49.1/55.9/57.0/56.5/54.7, 7:37 for 1mile straights-turns

Tavares – 50.0/48.5/50.5/53.0/50.2, 52.3/55.9/53.2/56.5/54.7, 9:00 for 1mile straights-turns

Averages

Derrick – 49.8/54.6, 52.2

Tavares – 50.4/54.5, 52.5

AHHHH!!! No sense of rhythm or pace for these guys… “15x300m at 70 pace? That’ll be easy coach!” … or so they said before the workout… Doesn’t end up that way if you can’t figure out how to run 17.5’s/100m, and instead run your 300’s in 14-16-20 for your splits en route to a 50… Watching them try to do this workout was quite impossible to tolerate for a ‘patterned’ brain like mine; there seemed to be no sense to it! LOL … Anyway, I spoke to them between set 1 & 2 about how to hopefully be more consistent in the second set, but to no avail. After the second set they were starting to fail pretty bad from their erratic running in the first set (the averages of 49.8/50.4 … their lactate levels were probably more along the lines of averaging 47 for those, the way they ran it), so I stopped the 300’s and had them do four laps of straights/turns, hoping to get the 17.5s/100m pace out of the straights, so that we’d still accomplish the pacing of the day. I think that was mostly successful.

Afterward we had a talk about how learning to run rhythmically was very important. I told them ultimately they need to learn how to run rhythmically and effortlessly at 55-pace in the 800m. But by practicing at 70-pace, we are able to get in much more volume of practice at this ‘concept’ of training. I explained that while we will ultimately learn to run rhythmically at 55-pace, we would only be able to do about a mile of work at that pace, or about 4 minutes of practicing rhythm. Whereas if we did 70-pace we could do about three miles, or about 14 minutes of practicing rhythm. I think they started to see some of the indirect correlations today between why we do stuff at various paces and how it can help them in the 800m. That was a good breakthrough today for these two.

Workout 1111/1212/1313/1212/1111 w/50m walk b/reps & 200m walk b/sets … goal 18-20s/100m

Jacquennee – 16.3/16.2/15.6/16.3, 16.0/34.0/17.9/35.7, 18.0/57.5/19.0/62.6, 18.5/38.3/19.5/40.3, 18.5/18.2/17.9/17.2

Averages

Jacquenne – 18.3

This was definitely a much more successful workout than last week when we attempted 12x400m with her and only got through 8 (mentally we probably only got through about 5). So that was a big victory of the day. There was still a little bit of prodding that had to occur throughout the workout, but with the reps being a lot shorter, it was much easier and there wasn’t a complete meltdown as with last week.

However, she, too, showed her inability to be rhythmic in this workout. I told her I wanted between 18-20s/100m the entire way through. And as you can see she averaged 16.8 for the first two complete sets, which is over a third of the workout. Granted looking at how the averages turned out, she probably could’ve done this entire workout at 17-18, but starting off so quickly (16.1 avg. first set) put her in the tank later. Her rest between the sets for the 200m walk was 3:30, then 4:30, then 7:30, then 5:30… it should probably be around 3-4min each one.

Another victory we experienced, however, was not only that we finished the workout with her, but also that we got her to finish positively. The last two 100m’s I told her that I knew she was tired, and she knew she was tired… so now that that was on the table… forget about it… just run with an emphasis on controlling her form. I stressed I didn’t want her to push any harder, simply keep her form together and run confidently through the line. She did that, and ran two progressively faster splits without looking like she was trying any harder.