Track Running

(I have one where I edited the GPS points, but I thought this was cool how the Garmin picked it up. Above the track you can see the tennis courts. Cool, huh?)

After a lousy set of tennis, I gave the track a whirl. I ran 400 meter intervals, since that seemed the easiest to figure out: run from the finish line back to the finish line. I had no idea how fast to run, but I did the intervals in increasingly fast times.

2:19
2:01
1:44
1:32
1:28

I could probably have run slightly faster, but I was pretty winded after the last one. I have to find out more about this speedwork, but it was definitely fun to be out there and running so fast.
One annoying thing about the track is that there were a lot of people walking slowly (strolling) around the track. I'm not sure why those people don't just go for a walk on the street or in the park. But if they do come to the track, it's really annoying that they will walk in the inner lane, which is the only one with proper measurements. (Or at least, the start and finish line are the same, and easy to see.) There were some people just standing on the track too. After about 5 laps I had to stop and ask this woman if she would move her stroller off the track, two feet in front of the finish line!



This guy was beyond comprehension. He was doing laps on the track in his motorized wheelchair! (I wish I had my real camera. This crappy picture is from my phone.) The first time around I figured he just didn't want to drive across the grass. But after 5 or so laps I just couldn't figure it out. Is that supposed to be some sort of exercise? (For his joystick fingers?)

Towards the end of my intervals, when it was getting pretty dark out there, there were these two girls who were just warming up, but they looked really fast. I thought they were just part of some high school or college track team, but my roommate thought they were professionals. And he was right. They told me I'd see them on TV sometime. We'll see.

Finally, one little rant against Blogger. Those word verification things for commenting can often be annoying, but today's was really a pain:

Can't they just do numbers or something that humans can read without leaning their head into the screen?

I'm off to Cleveland tomorrow. I hope to get a long run in on Friday.