objective
10x400m @ 90 sec. w/400m active recoveries

achieved
warm up .75 mi & jump rope
12x400m @ ? w/400m active recoveries
cool down 1 min. jog then 1 min. walk

~6:30 AM

There's an outdoor track and swimming pool on the ninth floor roof of my building (my place is on the 23rd floor). For speedwork today, I figured I'd try the track as it would be better than pounding on the concrete and asphault of the roads and Lakefront Trail. I went down to the track a little after 5 AM to find it doesn't open until 6 AM. This seems odd to me. The only reason I can figure is that if there was a group doing an early morning workout they may disturb the residents??? I don't know.

I went back down after 6 AM. After a couple loops on the track it was quickly apparent this wasn't going to work. According to my Garmin, the track was roughly 1/16 of mile with the turns being way too tight for any speedwork. I suppose it's essentially a walking track. (It sure has a nice surface.)

After about a half mile on the track, I pulled out my jump rope for a few turns while I tried to decide where to get my speedwork. I decided to hit a treadmill in the onsite gym.

There was a variety of machines and only one other person in the gym. I ended up on a Cybex treadmill, a type I've never tried before today. I messed around with the programming hope to find a modifiable interval routine. If it's there, I didn't find it. I ended up just manually adjusting the intervals as I went. I set the incline for 1% and set off. Starting with a quarter mile recovery at 5.0 mph. When the quarter was up, I cranked up the speed. I needed 10.0 mph but about flew off the back of the mill by the time I hit 8.0 mph! I left it at 8.0. It felt fast. After the quarter was up, I manually pulled it back down to 5.0 mph. And so it went. After a couple intervals, I ticked up a couple tenths from 8.0. I kept doing this until I was at 9.5 mph for the last couple intervals. It really makes quite a commotion when the belt is turning that fast. I felt slightly out of control too. Ahhh, livin' on the edge.

I decided to go 12 reps instead of 10 since I was going slower than I was supposed to. As you know, I'm always suspect of any treadmill's calibration as I have a theory that more than 80% of them are incorrectly calibrated.

I used the heart rate monitor a few times throughout. It looked like at the end of the rest intervals I was usually around 160 beats per minute and at the end of the work intervals, I was around 170 bpm.

This workout wasn't perfect but it was a reasonable facsimile of what was on my schedule. I feel like it was a decent quality workout.

pre run
-

post run
chocolate milk, multivitamin & homemade granola w/skim milk