Shake It Up

Today I did three sets of three 200m sprints followed by a 1k time trial. It had rained last night leaving me with the false hope that it would be cooler this morning. It was cooler...until the sun came up. Then it just got muggy.
One of my goals this year was to shake up my running routine. My High School English teacher would note the symbolism of how this reflects my shaken up life. And for once, she wouldn't be far off the mark. I was nervous to be with a new group after two years of predictability in my running. But it was a heap of fun. I was impressed that every split time we ran was recorded so that in future sessions, we can have personalized goals dependent on our previous times.
Since this was my first "serious" run since the 500k relay in November, I was really nervous on how I'd perform. I recognized a few runners that were near-ish to my pace, so I stuck with them. On the first three reps of 200m we were running a consistent 56 seconds. I was happy with this - it pushed me, but not too much. My usual MO is to keep a rocking pace the first half of a speed session and then sputter and die the second half. Not today! Today my goal was to keep something in reserve until the end.
The second set of 200m the first set. In the third set, I accidentally ended up pacing our group for the first rep and having no idea what time we'd started, I set us at a 54 second pace. Actually, I'm pretty happy with how close I came to the 56 second goal! Still, I slunk behind our usual pacer for the next two sets.
We had a breather before the 1k time trial. As mentioned, I was curious as to how I'd do. Last year with my Galeforce group I'd gotten down to three consecutive 1k reps of sub-4.45 minutes. But that was in August, before I got sick post-Whitsunday race in September! It took me a long time to recover from that. And then there were those four delightful weeks of rest over Christmas...
I started out too fast on the 1k, as I always do. But I kept pushing myself to keep the pace. I focussed on the shirt in front of me (yes, a fellow runner was wearing said shirt) and made it my goal to stick with him. A practical goal, as I forgot to check my start time and thought it would make sense to let someone else do the recording for me.
It was tricky in the middle as there was just that little bit of an uphill. Not an uphill you'd notice in a 10k race, but one you might notice in a 1k time trial.

Total time: 4.57 minutes.

Woohoo! So relieved that - despite all that's happened over the past few months - I am still starting off with faster 1k time trials this year than I was last year. And you know what? Even at the end of it all I felt like I was holding just a little bit back. I don't regret it, since it was my first tough running session since November. But I am super excited by both the results and potential. Look out, 5k races! I am going to kick your butt this year.