Let’s follow up yesterday’s sort of serious post about “listening to your body” with something lighter, eh?

Last night I ran my heart out, and it was awesome.

Wait, one more because Jen somehow got cropped out.

My buddy and coach Jess was coaching, and her workout for the group happened to be exactly what she had on my schedule. So sneaky.

We met at the E. 66th Street Lululemon and ran approximately .8 to the park to warm up.

It was nearly 7pm, and dark, when we got to the park, so we started at the bottom of the Great Lawn, smack dab in the middle, and ran up to the top, which is .25 a mile. We’d run up counter-clockwise to recover, and run all-out on the clockwise. Six times.

I fumbled with my Garmin as I started, and I ended up further back in the pack than I would have liked to have been and the super-competitive side of me got really frustrated. How did so many people get ahead of me? By the second 400 though, I looked over and saw Gia next to me and my perspective suddenly changed. Wait, Gia? Running even with me? She’s FAST!

Splits: 1:20, 1:19, 1:19, 1:18, 1:19, 1:18 — that’s a pace of 6:09ish!! When I saw that after the first one, I was very very happy. I only timed the 400s, so I don’t know our times or mileage total, but Ashley‘s DailyMile says we ran about 4, and that sounds about right.

As we ran out of the park on our cooldown, I chatted with Jess and told her that I didn’t like her very much this week. I had a really crappy tempo run on Monday, and last night’s workout was killer. “Good,” she said. “You should hate me this week.” (The race is in two weeks.)

What’s your favorite kind of speedwork? As painful as 400s or 800s are–and moreso, the recovery–I like them a lot better than trying to hold a tempo pace for miles at a time.