The End

The quad issue just wouldn't go away. The "season" was, and of course is, over. The disappointment is real.

As a quick summary:

1. 11.48 for a season best in the 100m Dash. 
2. I'm not even going to acknowledge the 200.
3. I didn't even show up to (due to quad) the main meet I wanted, the Masters Champs being held essentially "in my back yard". 

This was not remotely the way I projected any of this to go. In some ways, I'd argue (I guess unreasonably, but I'm an unreasonable person) this was a worst case scenario. While dramatic and a bit absurd to say, the rude awakening that this all provided is practically an experience in ontological shock for myself. Admittedly, a TRUE worst case scenario would have been either a hamstring tear of any significance or perhaps even an achilles injury or re-injury. By comparison, the results of this season should be considered not even remotely close to "worst case scenario". But it seems hard to overstate the borderline devastating effect running only 11.48 is having on my ego and sense of self. 

Considering that, it doesn't seem out of line for me to just give up this pursuit. But the plan for now is to, in fact, essentially double down for next year. Which is a little weird, because honestly my goals don't change. I've learned nothing in that sense, apparently. Which should inevitably set myself up for more major disappointment. BUT, I can be a little more honest and grounded this time around in my assessments. And if I run this slow again, or only marginally faster, I'll at least understand that it's just the reality of who and what I am now. There will be no caveats and question marks. And this time I can be sure to say that unless my sprint workouts or power output doesn’t improve exponentially, then I can't EXPECT anything except the same. So at least that lends itself to more buoyancy for next year in my expectations.

With THAT in mind, the plan is to try to run some indoor this time, and to actually run in some open college outdoor meets next year before summer hits. And, if I'm getting into the sub 11s, then I want to follow through next year and run at the Masters Champs in Iowa. But if I'm only in the 11s in May or June next year, I won't bother to make the trip to Iowa, and that may well conclude my sprint pursuits from there on out. It won't be worth the trouble to my family unless I can prove myself to be truly exceptional (at least to my mind). And I guess 10.7ish/10.8ish would/will be a bit exceptional. Sadly.

Either way....I'm probably not going to keep updating this blog. I'm too busy and too slow. And even if I get anywhere close to what I want to be...the gleam of it doesn’t feel as...bloggable...anymore.

So if you see me running a 10.7 next year, you'll know I followed through. And if not...

The Way Out is Through

A week ago, I ran in another track meet. This one was a dedicated "masters" meet.

11.48

24.60

Remember when I thought I'd run 10.8? Click here to laugh at my idiocy proof.

And thus concludes my 200m season.

I hadn't run a competitive 200m since I think 2011, and one might argue that these 200s I ran this year still don't really count as "competitive", exactly. Regardless, I'm not going to run at a track meet again until the July Masters Champs, and I'm not running the 200 there, so...that's that.

Really, I didn't train for the 200 at ALL. And in hindsight, it kinda seems like I didn't train for ANYTHING. Frankly, the last 10 to 20 meters of even my 100s feel like...I'm barely getting there. And if I'm dragging at the end of a 100...then I'm screwed in a 200.

It's clear to me that I just have NO real front side mechanics right now. And when I was good at sprinting, that was probably my bread and butter. I thought this might be an issue going in, but I half hoped and half expected that as I generally got stronger as I trained, it would just essentially come back. That's more or less what it seemed like happened in 2018/2019. At least from what I remember...

That is not the case this time around. I felt like a doofus at the end of this 11.48 100m dash while I tried to raise my knees while I sputtered to the end of the race. It's certainly pleasant that as I was running I had no injury fear to speak of...but perhaps the reason I have so little injury fear is simply because my angles, forces, ROM, and overall effort lacks as much risk. Because I'm slow now.

I had started typing out this post essentially right after the meet and I'm only coming back around to finishing it a week later. The fact is, I actually aggravated my quad in the 200m run, and I didn't even really know it until I moved around a bit later in the day. Initially I thought it was super minor, and I went ahead and did a big power clean/depth jump super set workout a couple days ago. While attempting to jump onto a 50" box, I REALLY aggravated the quad on the hip flexion to get on the box. And it's possible...that I might be in some trouble for the Masters Champs now.

The plan was to train HARD in these last couple weeks to knock off as much time as possible to make a good showing at the Masters Champs. Butttt, I don't know how that's going to play out now. I'm trying to train my way AROUND the quad, which probably means I'm just gonna make it worse like I did on the box jump. But I don't really want to just sit around attempting to let it heal only run another 11.5ish, or worse, again. So. I dunno, I guess I'm gonna try to force the issue a bit and see what happens.

I think a big component of why I tweaked the quad is because I'm trying to get back those frontside mechanics that I know I need to run better. But I don't have a lot of the "infrastructure" to make it happen right now, so that perhaps lead to my quad problem. Maybe if I really do stick to this for another year, this is something I can fix. Or at least improve on a lot...but it's not clear to me how much I deserve to be trying this hard with the limited results I'm getting.  Particularly in comparison to my expectations. 

I had hoped that a massive improvement at nationals would solve that quibble for me, but now it appears that quite the opposite is happening. The injury hasn't been that intense, frankly. But it's come at a very inopportune time. So whatever momentum I might have had is likely being squandered.

Part of my "forcing the issue" and work around with the quad is I'm doing some very chill old running workouts from my back catalog of "training" to try to keep my fitness up. These workouts kinda skip the intense hip flexion needed in full out sprinting...but also have limited carry over to actually improving my sprint hopes in the next 2.5 weeks. So I'm probably still only spinning my wheels with all this, AND perhaps still aggravating the quad, anyway. But this is the direction I'm forging ahead on; we'll have to see the results in the next few days/week. With luck (and I'm not typically a lucky person), the quad will heal pretty quick despite it all, and maybe I can still sneak at least ONE real sprint workout in before July 16th to get myself as prepped as possible.

Really this whole running attempt this year has not worked out at ALL the way I hoped, wanted, nor expected. I now just feel like I need a whole new calendar year of training, rebuilding my running foundation, AND attacking the weight room with more focus again, to give a more honest effort toward my goals. 

But that seems like quite an odd thing to be looking for when this "season" isn't even over yet.  I suppose between the lack of proper fitness and now this injury, this season feels like a wash already. So in that sense, I'm already looking for greener pastures and the promise of more potential for next year.

However, I still have a few weeks to try to salvage something this year, and I HAVE put in a lot of time and effort up till now. So abandoning what is before me would be pretty stupid. Plus, there's even a chance this is a last hurrah, so I should go all in as a result. I mean....I dropped two tenths in a week and I'm STILL essentially at 11.5. Yikes. Pretty embarrassing... It's hard to keep going when reality is so different from what you'd want or expect. And I've got kids and family needs....so there is a question about my intentions with all this since I just ain't as special as I thought.

But there is joy to be had here, too. So...I dunno. For the time being I should just keep my nose to the grindstone I guess.

Yikes...

11.70

24.26

Click here to see the proof of the embarrassment.

I'll post more about it later, but the gist of it is this; I am injury free still, but exposing a delusion is never a good time for the one with the delusions.

I will touch on this quickly though...

I think if I had been told, before I started "training" heavily for this, that all I'd manage is 11.70 for this race...I might have not bothered trying to compete again at all. But, now that I'm in it this deep, I'm ready to keep chasing the "dream". At least for the rest of this season, anyway. Then after running at the July meet, I can reassess if this is still all worth chasing beyond this year.

But that result is admittedly sobering, I gotta be clear about that. If I wasn't as old and been through as much I've been through (life, injuries, kids, etc.) I'd be pretty depressed about how this turned out. Luckily....I am old and worldly now. And I can bury that depression waaaaaayyyyy down....

I guess I'll go ahead and enter the July meet, considering I'm healthy. In my next post I'll go into more details, plus I'll explain in depth how I plan to drop 1.2 seconds off my time in one month.

Again...yikes. 

The Fragile

I've been listening to the "left disc" of the Nine Inch Nails album "The Fragile" a lot lately. It's probably my favorite album of all time, with NIN being far and away my favorite band. Anyone who knows me or knew me will not be shocked by these statements...and in fact they might roll their eyes since so little has apparently changed with me. 

Anyway, I put a CD version (left disc) of The Fragile inside one of our primary cars a while ago, and I haven't bothered to swap it with anything else for quite some time. So when I'm using that car to drive anywhere without the kids (like to the gym or to the track), I crank up the volume and use the album as my hype music on the way to whatever workout I'm doing.

That album came out in 1999. That was a bit of a turning point in my personal life, as well. I don't really want to go into a full autobiography here, but it's noteworthy because 1999 was the year I finally essentially became the "sprinter" I always wanted to be, and it's around when I had my ACL tear AND repair, as well (which is all tightly connected, but we're not getting into that here). It was a pretty formative time period, to say the least. 

That all went down when I was 15/16 years old, which is a formative period anyway, without any extra drama. But the ACL tear (where a kid seemingly intentionally leaned into my knee during gym class when I was on the ground during a simple pickup basketball game), all the way to running a 10.6 hand timed 100m Dash 11 months after the surgical repair was....a bit of a wild ride. And I remember listening to a lot of The Fragile (plus other bands like Korn, Staind, even Limp Bizkit, that whole rock era) during a huge chunk of it. The Fragile, very specifically, spoke to me then...and it still speaks to me now, frankly. It speaks to me in new ways, and in old ways...not unlike how training for sprints does, too.

Perhaps I'm an open book or I'm someone who just never really moves on, but a lot of what I learned, felt, and experienced during that period is foundational to the person I think I am today. And, certainly, still being able to attempt to "train" for "sprinting" even now is something I'm occasionally reminded to be truly grateful for. Which was something I felt and noted during (and especially after) my sprint workout this past Wednesday. 

The Wednesday Workout

85m: 9.7

120m: 13.6

70m: 8.3

I took 11 to 12 minute rests between the runs. Maybe a little longer than I should have, but I was really going for quality this time.

Burying The Lead

I'm pretty intentionally burying the lead of this workout under a pile of narcissistic word vomit, as it were. But I do that because, the fact is, this workout is kind of a "come to Jesus" moment about what I think I know. And I'd rather make my grandiose claims under a filter of boring jibberish as a kind of filter/defense in case I end up proven completely wrong in a week.

Everything about this sprint workout should lead to pretty clear and concise conclusions. But those conclusions are all built on the past precedence of my flimsy logic and arithmetic. Using THAT information and data, the facts are pretty clear: I should officially be a sub 11 guy again now, and there's even a decent chance that I can legitimately dip under a 10.8 with just decent weather conditions within the next week or two. That's what the workout, based on how I read the tea leaves, says. And there's no getting away from that kind of predictive claim when, next week, I'm supposed to run an official 100m dash at a track meet.

That should all be great for building confidence and a fair amount of eagerness for the upcoming competition opportunity. BUT, if I've been living way out in left field with all these assumptions that I base my "100m conversions" on, then all that confidence is really just blind ignorance. 

Further Methodology

So, I performed this workout almost identically to how I performed during the infamous (in my mind anyway) March 15th workout. If it wasn't an identical result, then it ended up being an ever-so-slightly better one based on thousandth of seconds self timing results (which one shouldn't do, of course). All of it practically identical, but for one SIGNIFICANT difference: wind. On March 15th, I had consistent 15 to 20 mph tailwinds while I ran, with random gusts even above that. This past Wednesday, I had 3 to 5 mph tailwinds, at best. It often felt windless. Simply put, wind wasn't a factor at all in this past Wednesday workout, whereas it was the whole story of my March 15th workout.

To be able to repeat the sprint results of March 15th, but do so with virtually no wind...is fairly huge. Even outside of me trying to guess what I can run in a competitve 100m off the sprint results, the proof of progress off these facts is pretty absolute. I've certainly improved legitimately, which is pretty invigorating in itself regardless of what these workouts "convert" to in my head. This, put plainly...is good. 

Plus, the events leading up to the workout were not optimal. I had planned on doing the workout at my "home" track, but when I got there after already prepping extensively, I discovered that a high school girls lacrosse playoff game was being played at the stadium where the track is. I hadn't even looked around for official stadium usage info because school is OVER; I though the risk was zero. I was pretty confused when I rolled up and I saw buses and people at the gate, to say the least.

So I had to drive around looking for a different track to use. The first option I went to didn't work; the stadium was completely locked. At that point, my mind started to wander into catastrophic mode and I pondered what abandoning the sprint attempt would look like for the day and for the short term training plan. On a lark, though, I drove to ANOTHER track at a school I'd never heard of still fairly close to where I was at the time. The setup seemed iffy, but I still parked and went to the gate. That gate was, of course, locked. But another one wasn't. So...I went for it and went in. Started warming up. And...eventually did the whole workout.

I went from almost mentally giving up the pursuit at all, to back to DOING the workout (while wondering if I'd get chased off the track by security), all after sitting around longer than I expected driving and looking for a place to run. And after all that I still ran a workout of that quality and with that much health. To me...this is about as legit a performance result as I can get, outside of a track meet itself.

Adult Track Night

Speaking of a track meet, time to put my money where my mouth is (literally, since meet entries cost a ton more, relative to what I feel they used to). Friday, June 12th, I'm running at the Adult Track Night event at Green. I entered myself in the 100m AND the 200m, though it's not clear to me how certain it is that I'll actually run the 200. For training purposes, I really want to do it. But I'm not sure if it'll work out that way. 

I figure there's no real point in playing coy with my meet info and plan at this point. Certainly, a LOT can happen still between now and next Friday, in terms of injury or family (these KIDS) complications. But the biggest risk was that sprint workout, and that workout is successfully over. I REALLY cranked it on those runs, too; there was no holding back in those results. Despite that, my body felt fine during it all; even the achilles was pretty decent. I've got terrible luck and I'm not very smart, so certainly I could still do something to hurt myself somehow in the next few days. But that workout actually seems to showcase a legitimate level of resiliency in my body currently. Theoretically, I should have a degree of confidence for once.

As a result, I bit the bullet already and purchased a USATF membership. I found ANOTHER track meet I want to run in that's a perfect dry run for actually running at the Masters Champs in July, and I've already entered THAT meet as well. I don't think I'll actually drop the money on the July Masters Champs until after the meet in Green, though. Each event at the July meet costs $65, for crying out loud. And I'm still leaning on trying to run both the 100 AND 200, too... 

It just seems like the exact kind of stupid situation I'd put myself in to spend $130 for the July meet and then blow out my hamstring at this meet in Green next week. The deadline for the Masters Champs is June 16th, so I have plenty of wiggle room anyway. If I finish healthy at the meet next week in Green, then I'll officially enter the July Masters meet promptly.

I guess...still hold onto your butts.

A Little Dose of Reality

Well.....the last sprint workout didn't go at all the way I expected.

120m: 13.9

160m: 19.1

120m: 14.7

I ran this workout on Tuesday. The goal was to really let it rip; I wanted to further prove that I'm ready to start digging way below sub-11 from here on out, so I tried to set myself up to be perfectly fresh and ready to go for this workout. I had some big expectations, and I had even mapped out what my times and splits should look like on the track, based on my big expectations, before I went.

Then reality eventually struck.

The weather was nice and warm, and I DID feel fairly good going into it. But then even on the first run, after about 50/60 meters, I could tell I wasn't doing well. Nothing hurt, and I was pushing HARD seemingly successfully. But I was pushing super hard and not getting a lot of return back on the investment. I FELT the work I had put in between the sets, too; I was roasted already even after one run. 

One of the reasons I ran this past Tuesday,  specifically, was because it was going to be WARM but NOT have big winds. I wanted to see what it looked like when I ran without the benefit of strong tailwinds pushing me along.  Well I sure got what I wished...and I don't like it. Pretty discouraging.  

I also ran on a track I use less often, and I suppose I can wonder if that track itself hurt the results in terms of time results and perceived effort. It's a track that's in pretty poor shape, and I was surprised at how much my feet hurt running on it as opposed to what I've typically felt while running at the other track I use. There's a lot of wear and many thin spots on the track surface, down to concrete in some spots, and a few cracks even through the foundation of the track on just the straight away. 

But that's probably all just excuses. It sure would help if the truth is that track zapped out some of my timing potential AND energy output while I ran on it. I suppose if I run well next week, then I can give such a theory some validity, but for now...maybe this is just all I've got.

Expectations

Well, one of a couple reasons this is a disappointing workout result is I was looking to prove that I'm either on my way, or already there, to run in the vicinity of a 10.8 BASIC 100m Dash on June 12th. This workout does not support that kind of trajectory at ALL. This workout equates more to an 11.05ish result rather than a 10.8. Last week's workout I would have argued was more of a 10.8ish type result, but that wind probably tainted that result considerably. 

It's interesting that really most of this seems identical to the last time I did a 120+160+120 workout. The same scenario played out then: I went in with huge expectations and then when I ran I was nowhere near them. The next workout after that, though, was that hyper wind aided March 15th workout which seemed to go so well. So I guess I want the similarities/trend to continue. I'll probably even wind chase again for my next workout.

Anyway, so maybe come competition time I'm going to have to truly conceptualize settling/coming to terms with running in the 11s over 100 meteres. And I need to learn to see a 10.9x type result as something of a wild success. I have to prepare for that mentally, otherwise I'd probably have a really bad attitude if thats what I run when I think I should be going 10.7/10.8

I've still got another week and a half of training opportunity, so maybe I can still make some big dents...but we're kinda coming up on it now.  I'm gonna be what I'm gonna be at this point. Maybe that's 10.95/11.05...maybe it's even 11.25/11.30. I really can't be sure. The primary goal is still to FIND OUT by showing up and running at that meet.

Can't totally kill that 10.8 hope, though...

Man I'm Banal and Tone Deaf. No One Needs This Post Outside of my Ego

Sunny, 85°. 10/15 winds from the south west on a north/south orientated track. Ran on the back stretch, so all with fairly strong tail winds. Around 8/10 minutes rest between runs.

070m: 08.1

120m: 13.6

060m: 07.2

Here We Go Again

A little history here. On May 16th, 2025, I attempted this 70+120+60 combo sprint workout. It was the first time I was doing a concentrated and fully fleshed out sprint workout since I tore my achilles in March of 2023, and even prior to that I hadn't done this level of true sprint "workout" really since 2019. So one year prior to today's workout results listed above, I ran this same workout with results as follows:

070m: 08.6

120m: 14.5

060m: 07.4

Sure enough, on the final 60m run in the 2025 version, I pulled my right calf. Somewhere around a grade 1 strain, I imagine. When you contrast what I'm doing a year later with what happened one year ago...I guess you could say I've improved. I'm exponentially faster, and I'm not (currently) hurt (technically) as a result of the workout.

I was doing this workout a year ago in an attempt to get prepared to run at a mid-June open track meet that was going to be held very near where I live. The same one I'm intending to do this year. So, with that calf strain so near to the meet last year, and the fact an injury resulted from ONE simple sprint workout attempt....the meet seemed unlikely to happen in 2025 after the workout. 

I actually tried to sign up for it anyway, after it seemed like the calf healed up enough after a couple weeks. But when I went to enter the meet near the deadline (but before the posted online deadline date), I learned they had shut down entries into the 100m Dash because too many people had already signed up. So that's what officially ended it. With my poor fitness and questionable health, it was probably all for the better that it worked it that way; that workout I did in '25, based on my math, would have only made for an 11.5ish. Maybe even slower. I woulda regretted running that.

More Boring Back Story

I was being so persistent to get into the meet, despite not being in legit shape for it, for something of sentimental reasons. I had learned of the existence of this annual meet only a few months into my achilles surgery recovery in 2023. When I saw what the meet was (like a kind of masters meet, but a little bit more open and "fun"), I made it a goal in the back of mind to run in it after my achilles had recovered. 

The next year in 2024, my daughter Evelyn was born in May...and as a result, there was no way I could make the meet at ALL, let alone be properly prepared/trained for it. So I did target 2025 as my chance to finally achieve the goal. But then, between my OTHER achilles issues, and a still pretty rough time getting proper training in with all the childcare that goes on around here, the plan basically got chewed up and lost even in 2025.

After the failed meet attempt last year, I kept trying to progress my training with the SPECIFIC plan of actually sprinting again. I took a step back from running workouts after that mid June situation, but kept building up fitness and in the early fall I started back up sprint workouts. Except by autumn I had much more intention with my plan and was already considerably better off to begin such workouts. The plan THEN was to actually run some indoor 60m sprints in the winter to have a REALLY legit build up to the outdoor season. That was the plan, anyway....

Obviously the appendectomy at the end of October ended the indoor plans and completely altered competition trajectories. However, I started my sprint workout pursuits so much earlier, and so much more as a goal, that even with a great many repeated setbacks, I'm still NOW in decent position to at minimum run in this June meet. 

Arguably now, after this most recent workout, not only am I more prepared to actually run in the June meet (I signed up as soon as the meet confirmed it's 2026 addition, so even that's already set up), but I can now expect to do it with some semblance of competency, to boot. How competent may still be open to interpretation and debate, but a general and sensible "competent" performance should be achievable. Speaking of the implications of this most recent workout...

Expectations

So, I was developing wild expectations a few months ago. Wild enough that even I had to admit the truth and reel myself back a few times. But let us be honest, I have not learned my lesson; I never learn my lesson and I always wildly project and fantasize. My progress may have gotten interrupted in April, but with my achilles perhaps evening out a bit (more on that later), I can start to be my old delusional self again. 

This recent workout result is actually very reminiscent of my March 15th sprint workout result in a LOT of ways. There's a pattern here, because I said the same thing about my workout on May 4th, as well. This is all related, on some level, to how I target windy, warm-ish days for sprint workouts. I chase the winds to stack the deck for my outcomes. Plus, I feel it's more valuable for your body to cover the distance faster, even wind aided, than to battle through something like a headwind on quality sprint efforts. 

And, while I did try to target a nice warm day for this workout, I'm actually becoming conflicted about the helpful strong tailwinds for workouts like these. In the case of this specific workout, I didn't even really know the wind would be as strong as it ended up being.  That was a bit happenstance. I can probably still use the ego/confidence boost that these winds provide for my results, but I'd actually rather start getting sprint data without so much wind help now so I can parse reality from fiction at least a TINY bit better.

As it stands, this sprint workout had less winds than the March 15th one, and so the timing predictions built off these results could THEORETICALLY be closer to legitimate. But I still had some help down the track....so when I say I think this workout implies a 10.8 flat 100m, give or take a couple hundreths, maybe that still comes with some wind conversion needs (plus whatever inaccuracies my "conversions" have). In the end, the only real way to prove or disprove any of this is to actually run a competitive 100m Dash. Hopefully that finally happens June 12th at the meet.

When I look back at that March 15th workout, that workout seemed to indicate a 10.85 ability (again give or take; in the post I wrote after the workout I claimed 10.86/10.88), but the winds were MUCH stronger that day; I think the winds were around 20/25 mph consistently that day, and were coming more directly from the south. Garbage cans were getting pushed over on the infield, and I had to put stuff on top of my workout bag so that it didn't get blown down the track.

Yesterday certainly had winds in the 10/15 mph range, but slightly more cross-wind-ish than right behind me; though they definitely still help. So, potentially, having a slightly improved result with less wind benefit compared to March 15th should be a really, really good sign. Additionally, I've taken a really close look at the data I've got for each workout. Taking that info and combining it with what I also felt and experienced yesterday, I think I can say something with a degree of confidence: I was actually more "in tune" to running fast on March 15th than I was yesterday. 

The break I took during April for my achilles, and the longer workouts I've been utilizing since starting back up running, has not really addressed the needs of reaching and trying to maintain TOP speeds. Yesterday's workout was actually the first fully unleashed, max velocity search type sprint since....that March 15th workout. After the first 30/40 meters of each run yesterday, I really felt out of sorts, and a little scared of injury. I couldn't maintain and explore my positions and effort as much as I felt like I was prior to the achilles April shutdown.  But I think the first 30/40 meters were incredibly explosive, so that's the positive flip side. 

Sooooo, I wanna believe that I still have a HIGH ceiling even from where I'm at now. If I can get back to what I was trying to do in max velocity/maintenance in March, maybe there's still a lot if progress to be had for me going into July. But that all remains to be seen, as per SOP.

The Weird Things I Do/ Achilles Status 

So, I was gonna do a deep dive into some of the things that I do that REALLY make me weird with my workouts. Some of that now bleeds into my achilles stuff a little bit, so I'm gonna quit this entry HERE, and maybe save that topic for the next post. I might have some actual useful info in that post, so I'll try to give it its own space rather than bury it under the word vomit that is this mess.

I will say this; for the time being, it appears I've got my achilles in a place where it's going to at least let me pursue my sprinting. But one never knows how quickly that kind of thing will change. It's clearly taken a turn for the better over the past few weeks, though, so I'll post more specifically about that in the next one.

One More Final Note

I had also run this 70+120+60 workout on February 27th of this year, my second workout run outside at the time:

070m: 08.2

120m: 13.9

060m: 07.4

In looking at the stats, I was having similar problems with breaking down/being uncomfortable after the initial "drive phase" period in that workout, too. After that workout I did a 120+160+120 workout the next week that went not as well as I had hoped, and then I broke through on that March 15th workout where I actually FELT kind of fast and in control. Well, relatively anyway. 

The plan next week is to do another 120+160+120 workout. That might give me another solid chance to assess where I'm at and to try to get more comfortable moving fast for longer periods again. Hopefully it then sets me up for success at the meet in June. That's the hope, anyway.

Probably Not Real

160: 19.3

200: 24.9

200: 25.0

160: 19.7

I'm not out of the game yet. Apparently. Those are my sprint workout stats from yesterday. I took huge rests, especially before that last 160m (I think it approached 18 minutes), and I had huge winds on my back...but that seemed like a really good result no matter the circumstances.

I just looked back at my last few posts, and I pondered how those posts fit with my actual lived experience. To a surprising extent, that March 15th sprint workout was kind of the beginning of the end for me, as it were. Or maybe it was more the "horizontal plyos" I did that I never posted about a few days after that sprint workout. In fact, those plyos must have been what REALLY started to push my achilles over the edge, probably more so than the sprints.

I guess those plyos were a supremely bad idea. But, I did PERFORM them well. I suppose at too much of a cost. I guess I can't incorporate what I call "horizontal" plyos (which include single leg triple bounds as part of the overall session) into my plans until my achilles shows legitimate progression from its currently typically inflammed state. The depth jumps, which of course are bilateral, don't bother it as much. So...I'm going to just stick with those for now until after July (when I'll reasses my achilles and try to "rehab" it). Unless my achilles improves dramatically as I build up to the July masters meet I'm trying to run in, but clearly that's unlikely. 

Anyway, between my achilles, my back, and just my overall concept for my training plan, everything has been pretty steeply down hill from the successfully performed tandem of that sprint workout and plyo sesh. Until this workout I did yesterday, that is. This is the first truly decent output I've had in a workout since I pulled my back on March 31st. 

In essence, the workout yesterday was like a rebooted version of that March 15th sprint workout; it was highly wind aided, with good warm temperatures, big rest periods, and the results seem very exciting (if not tempered by the knowledge of the wind).

Except, in this case, I wasn't going in expecting big results out of the workout. The goal here was simply to get through the workout without blowing up my achilles.  Or anything else. When I looked down at the clock to see my times, I was very pleasantly surprised. And a little confused. Part of me wonders if I measured something wrong on my distances...

Originally, these longer workouts seemed more risky for the achilles. But I've done two of these since trying to get back to running again, and right now I'm actually preferring them to the faster, shorter sprint sessions. For the time being, I'm holding off on planning a full go shorter workout until I'm a little more ready to go. So next week I'm going to repeat the longer workout I did last week, but hopefully perform it more intentionally fast. Then from there I hope to reincorporate the shorter workouts, too.

I'm not out of the woods yet, but my achilles seems to be responding well right now. So the goal of running at a meet in June that I signed up for is now full go. That's kind of my deadline for whether or not I'll really go for the masters meet in July. If I can't run in that June meet, it's hard to imagine I'll be in a good place for July.

This workout result was a really good first step towards that, though. Assuming this was all real...