Need For Speed

With the prospect of shorter races looming, I've begun to consider introducing some speed work back to my training.  The long, slow stuff has definitely help to strengthen my knees and I had played around with the track when NIACC went to Nationals in Texas.  So I started to head to the Mason City High School track but with sun and rising temps, I chose to run repeats on a roughly 1/4 mile stretch on Lime Creek.

So the workout ended up to be a mile and a half warm up, followed by 7 X 400 with 4 and 1/2 minutes walking rest between them, then a mile and a half cool down home.  The 400's were within a 5 second spread of 75 seconds each (70 - 79).  I haven't tried this type of workout in a looong time.  It felt good again.

A few more pics from the Black Hills.

5.5 miles for the AM. 3 mile hike after dusk.