Austin Summer Twilight Track Meet #1

It was pretty damn hot on this sunny afternoon - 95 degrees for those scoring at home. A few hours before the meet, I decided my approach for the day was - don't let your first track meet be your last. Translation, I was not going to go out there & try to be a super star. I was aiming to get in some uptempo work and have fun while doing so. I decided to for sure run the 3200, the quarter, and maybe the 1600 (depending on how I was feeling after two races).

There wasn't a huge crowd for the 3200, could have been folks were at the NCAA regional meet (who knows for sure). I believe there were 11 total in the race. My plan was to run 80-82s and no faster until 800m to go. However, I was not going to go out and take the lead. I wanted to sit back and get a feel for things. And that's what I did. The pace was freaking slow at the start: 87 for the first lap, and I had about 545 at the mile mark. With a mile left there was one guy ahead of me (about 30 meters if I had to guess). The pace was sorta fucking with me (mentally) and at 2000m I had no desire to speed up. I just sorta crept along until there were 400m left. I picked up the pace some with a lap to go, but dude was still at least 30m ahead. I didn't think I was going to be able to catch him, but w/ 150 to go, I began to find that other gear. I made up about 20-25m (if I had to guess) in the last 80m. I passed the leader w/ approx 5m to go. First place -11:13 - nothing to really brag about, but I still won. :-)

The 400m came up quickly after the 3200m. About 20 min if I had to guess. I was very, very close to throwing in the towel and calling it a day. But I walked over to the starting line anyway. The goal was to run a relaxed quarter, maybe 63-65. But then the 20 yo's ran in the heat before us. They hauled ass. All of em but one were 58 or better, and the leader came in at 51 sec. Uh oh, I thought. My heat only had 4 people, but one of them, I could tell was going fly. Starting line final plan, I decided I was going to take off at a good clip, but nothing too crazy. At the 200m mark (after starting in lane 4), I saw 28 sec on the watch (holy shit, I thought), so I dug deep and tried to maintain speed. I held on good and ended up at 59 sec for the quarter mile. Nice!

After the quarter, I called it a day, feeling it would be good to end on a high note. No 1600m on this day, next time! I am thinking one or 2 more meets at the max this summer. Then I will take a one week break and start the real base training in July/August. Could change, but that's the plan as of now.