Finally!

After weeks of unsuccessful attempts, I finally got to do a workout on the BYU indoor track. It's usually open most of the time, but lately whenever I've gone down there (even after calling the Richards Building front desk and receiving the assurance that it would be open) it's been closed, forcing me to jerry-rig another workout last minute.

But on this the last day of finals it was open. And who should I see sharing the track with me, but none other than Jared Ward:

Though his last year of NCAA eligibility was 2013 (the story of his final season was pretty bizarre, you can read about it here), I think he is still studying here as a graduate student. He was just jogging some easy laps and I was doing some short intervals, so I actually got to pass him which was pretty sweet. I wanted to talk to him and ask him how his running was going, but he left shortly after I got there (he was probably intimidated by my speed.)

But I felt like seeing Ward was a good portent. My workout was a two mile warm up, followed by 10 laps (1/5 mile each) at all-out pace with one minute recovery. From the splits you can tell it went very well:

1:04 translates to a 5:20 per mile pace, which is a good deal faster than anything I've been running lately. Next week I'll be in Oregon on Christmas vacation, and I plan to use the richer air to try breaking my 5K PR. Since my last race I knew that my biggest weakness was my aerobic capacity; so I've done lots of long intervals and hills to push my threshold. And I was making a lot of progress and feeling good, but I anticipated a problem; when I get down to sea-level and my lungs are no longer what's holding me back, if my legs still aren't used to moving that fast I'm going to have trouble holding that 6-minute-per-mile pace that I need. Hence the use of short-intervals for my final pre-race hard workout.

Now that the work is done it's time to take it easy, carbo-load with mountains of Christmas treats, and enjoy the spoils of my hard work. Wish me luck!