My Revelation
I always thought of myself as primarily a distance runner, with alright top speed but good aerobic endurance to back it up. I started doing track sophomore year of HS cause a lot of my friends were doing it, and since they were all coming from a XC background naturally I worked out with them on the distance team. My 800 times were ok for our school, so that's where our coach put me, and I always figured he probably knew best and that's where my strength was.
However, after lurking around Letsrun for a while and looking back at my HS times, I'm starting to realize that I was really just a pretty good sprinter with godawful endurance. My times:
Open 400: 50.7
800: 2:02
1600: 4:54
I only raced the 400 and 1600 like 3 times each throughout HS, almost all of my meets were 800, 4x800 and 4x400. Looking back I really wish I had been able to do some speed work, work on sprinting form, learn how to use blocks etc. and see how much more I could have gotten out of my 400.
What Next?
The reason I started reading Letsrun is because I recently decided to get back into running shape and was looking for some workouts and training advice. It's been about 8 years since I ran consistently, but I've stayed in pretty good shape with lifting and various sports. I've also put on about 30lbs (mostly muscle) since HS.
As long as I'm running again, I'd like to set some goals to work towards. I have some in mind, but I'm not sure how feasible they might be:
400: