Ben’s Workout
A few weeks ago, I was reading through logs on AthletiCore and came across a workout that Ben Hovis did. Looking through the logs of other runners is a good way to pick up new workouts that can help spice up your own training. In this particular case, Ben's workout was a 4x400 followed by a 5 mile temp and then another 4 x 400.
Making a mental note about this workout at the time, I penciled it in for my workout today.
Before getting into the details, I have to say this is one of the hardest workouts that I have done.
Around 11 I took a break from work and headed over to the Mallard Creek Greenway. There is a small place where I like to park and has a good spot for running 400 meter repeats.
After a 2 mile warm up, I was ready to get started. Well, maybe not ready. I knew this was a tough workout going in and half expected to fall apart before the end.
Knocking down the first quarter in 79 was a good sign. This was followed by 3 more quarters in 76, 77, and 76.
So okay, the first 4 quarters went much better than expected which was nothing like my Yasso 800 fiasco on Tuesday morning. Now, it was time for the 5 mile tempo run.
Turning off the mile splits on my Garmin I was just going to check the time at the turn around and at the finish. Worrying about splits along the way wouldn't do me any good and would probably just take my focus away from the workout.
Turning around at the 2.5 miles my split was 15:45 and my heart rate was averaging 170. Since this course was an out and back on the greenway, there was no course advantage to running in one particular direction.
My arms felt a little heavy and so were my legs. But I tried to shake them out and keep them moving.
At the finish, my 5 mile time was 29:24 and my heart rate was 182. Now this was nice. Not only had a run under 6 minute pace for the entire tempo and did it solo, I had a negative split of 21 seconds.
But I wasn't finished. There was another 4 x 400 with 1 minute recovery to do after taking a 5 minute recovery period from the tempo run.
The first quarter was in 79, 2nd in 78, 3rd in 78, and 4th in 76.
Overall, this was a far cry from my Yasso 800 workout on Tuesday. And while, I didn't feel great during the workout and didn't really feel like I had the kind of pop in my legs that I wanted to feel, my legs and body hung on and gave me one of my best workouts that I have had this year.
Not sure where Ben got this workout, but it was the right workout and at the right time for me and it restored some of my sagging motivation.
Tales from the Greenway
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