Better Luck Next Year....

Even though I had not been back on the track for a few weeks, last Tuesday (August 10th) I thought, what the heck, I'd put the spikes on and see what I could run for a 400M. For a warm up, I ran a few slow laps to take it easy on the archilles, and it felt OK. After stretching, I did a few slow run throughs in spikes and the archilles was still OK. I then started the 400M and while I had no idea what pace I was running, felt pretty good. At 300M I took a glance at my timer (I didn't have a stopwatch so used a small clock with a second counting function) and bloody hell...I had somehow turned the clock off while running, #!$! So I stopped running - no point going on with no time - to conserve effort for another attempt.

I could only wait about 5 minutes as I had to get back to work, so decided to try running 300M instead and see how that went. Archilles still OK. During the first 100M I thought I was going OK, maybe a little heavy in the legs, but it took me 52 seconds.... Terrible! I don't know if I significantly underestimated what it takes at 46 years of age to get in shape for a sub-60 second 400M (probably) or if that first 400M attempt took a lot out of me (perhaps a bit of both). At this point my archilles was sore again and for the next few days my calves as stiff as boads.

Common sense has now prevailed and I would probably risk damaging my ageing frame in trying to do a 400M in less than 2 weeks. I am more determined now though to get my legs in better shape for next year and have a more serious attempt!