400 metres

Athletes who are masochists run the 400 metres.

It's a sprint.  Only the body is not supposed to sprint full speed for that distance.

So by the last 50 metres the legs are wobbling, the throat is burning, and you're just pumping the arms to keep the legs moving.  And then once you're over the finish line the sick feeling starts, and builds.

It's even worse when the wind is strong.

I did a 400m yesterday.  With a head wind on the final straight gusting up to 6 m/s.

I signed up on Wednesday, so I had a few days of anticipating the pain.

Why did I do it?

Basically, out of curiosity.

It's been over 25 years since I last ran a 400m race on a rubber track.  Over the past few years, since getting back into athletics with the children, I've done several on grass.  But I hadn't done a best-as-I-can effort on rubber.

So I did.  And I'm kinda proud of myself.  Yeah it hurt, yeah I was beaten on the line by a 12-year-old, and yeah I vomited afterwards, but I made it.

My time was 60.38 seconds, which was a surprise.  I would've been satisfied with anything under 65 seconds.  Mulan videoed it:

I was never a 400m runner; I'm not enough of a masochist to do the training.  But I did do it occasionally.  My best ever time was 29 years ago when I was 17 years old, when I finished in 52.27 seconds.

I'm not sure if I'll do it again.  If I consistently did one or two running sessions a week over winter I may drop under 60 seconds, but I'm not sure if the achy joints can handle that sort of regular training.  Anyway, we'll see what happens.

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Meanwhile, Mulan did a few runs yesterday, too.

She signed up for the 80m hurdles, 60m and 100m.  She was also curious about her times, as she'd never done 100m on rubber and she hadn't done 60m in five years.

Unfortunately the huge head wind made things tough.  It also didn't help that she arrived at the track after having done two and a half hours of ballet, so her legs were already pretty fatigued.

But it was a good experience, and a very useful learning opportunity to know how to handle hurdles into a strong head wind.  (And at least she bettered her 60m PB she got when she was nine years old.)

The results are here.