I went to the park this morning for some speedwork, and as I suspected I still haven’t fully recovered from my bout with the flu. After not running for two weeks, it’s gonna take a couple days to get back in the swing of things and get my legs under me.

Here was the plan:

Warm-up.  Easy 800m run, some dynamic warm-up/stretches, and some strides.

Medium intensity 400m run to finish warm-up (~90 seconds).

2 x High Intensity 400m run, with 10-15 minutes recovery (~75-80 seconds).

The last time I did a 400m workout, I followed the same pattern and my two workout quarters were in the 70′s – a time that I was more than satisfied with. Today, I warmed up and felt fine. The warm-up 400m went well, and I came in at 92 seconds.

The workout 400s were a bit slow, though.  The first one was 82 seconds, which wouldn’t have upset me if the next one was an improvement. But, the last 400 was slower – around 85 seconds.  In both of the workout quarters, I felt like I came out too slow because my legs felt dead. I picked up the pace over the last 200m, but it was too little too late.

I also tried to run through the end of the last 400m, extending it to 600m or 800m. Hah!  That wasn’t going to happen. I made it about 50m past the mark, and I couldn’t maintain the pace.

Just like yesterday, I’m going to chalk this workout up to recovery from the flu and time off. I’ll run a couple steady state runs this week, and hopefully next weekend I’ll be back on track. I only have three weeks left until my 5k race, so I’m running out of time on that. I do, however, have plenty of time before I need to run my 400m and 800m races in June.