Jamie and I were running on the Boulder Creek Path this morning and came across this track that must be part of the University of Colorado, Boulder. We couldn’t resist getting credit for a Sweet16 run but only did one mile here as the trail was much more interesting.
I hit the Cornell track for a Sweet 1600 on my walk from PT to my office. It was close to noon, yet I still had the whole track to myself.
Wedged the 1600 run into my long bike ride day. It was sunny and hot with no wind, but there were a few other folks on the track so we suffered together. I biked around the track 2 full times until I found the entrance 
. Penultimate run down !!! And got to bike past sunflowers on my way home
I’m so glad we found it our local high school keeps the track open. 
Matt and I did a lovely sunny walk 
After too much sitting this morning, I decided to take a walk around my building … which morphed into walking slightly further down campus than I intended … which brought me to the track … which made me decide to walk a Sweet 1600.
I start my Garmin, and the whole time I am watching the dark clouds in the distance. I swear the sky directly above the track was mostly clear. I thought about taking a pano but then heard thunder in the distance. I moved from lane 8 to 1 so that I would have less distance to cover to get to the gate. I thought it was strange that I didn’t get a lap alert but was focused on getting back to my building.
As it turns out, my Garmin doesn’t track distance when you start a YOGA activity. 
I logged a 15 minute mile in Webscorer. I’m willing to fight anyone who wants to challenge the ‘speedy’ mile I logged without a GPS file to back it up! 
We are on a family trip to Norway, and today was spent in Bergen. We took the funicular up to the local hilltop with a view of the town and waterfront. On the hike back down, we came across a wonderful six lane track nestled into the side of the hill, surrounded by pine trees with views of the bay and the surrounding peaks. Oliver, Ben, and I went for an impromptu sweet 1600 in the cool, misting rain of the day while Rebecca, ever the wisest, settled for her role as photographer. Afterwards we finished walking back to town and then had a fine lunch at the old meat market.
I love this…I love how you (and others) just happen upon a track and right then decide to bust out an impromptu Sweet 1600. We’re definitely runners at heart. 
Looks like a day well spent and I bet those beers were good! Enjoy the rest of your trip!
I raced a mile today at a Triple Cities Runners Club meet in Endicott. When I arrived at the track I did my standard warm up: 2 miles (done on the track to get two 1600s), then changed into spikes to do 4 strides.
The race went off and one runner immediately went to the lead. I negotiated the initial congestion and situated myself in second place, right on the heels of the leader. Lap 1 was fast (about 1:12 through 409 meters, which is 4:43 pace), but the pace slowed on laps 2 and 3. We hit 809 and 1209 in about 2:31 and 3:47. It would have been nice to run a bit faster, but I wanted to win this race so I wasn’t going to push the pace and let anyone draft off me. With 300 meters to go, I made my move into the lead and kicked the rest of the way to win in 4:54 (at least that’s what my watch said when I stopped it; I might have to adjust my time once the official results are posted).
After watching the other races and cheering on some friends, I ran another 8 laps to bring my Sweet 1600 total to 5 for the day and 116 for the year.
I keep choosing hot days to knock off challenge courses, and today (on my vacation) was no exception! I haven’t run a 1600 since the fall when @adamengst coached indoor track, so I had lowered expectations. That, and the 81 degree temps with 84% humidity and 17 mph winds made for an interesting workout 
.
With four courses to go and being in Cape Cod for the week, the only one I could take on was the 1600, so I set out to the local high school track:
It was a beautiful, hot, breezy day. The first 200 meters of each lap had the wind at my back, so the second 200 was directly into it. I was very happy to have rounded the final lap, and to check that one off my list!
I proudly wore my favorite Ithaca swag, courtesy of the @finger-lakes-running.
Well, since a cell experiment is dragging me into the lab every single day, I decided to get a Sweet 1600 done on the Cornell track today. I headed over to the track while instruments were in the autoclave, got my mile, and came back to remove the stuff from the autoclave.
Here is a picture of my fed and hopefully happy cells in their ‘home’.
Finally got to run on our home track (last year it was under construction) and in my new Hokas.
4 miles of speed work and a 1 mile cool down walk with my girls. @DamianClemons may have bribed them with ice cream.
I had an extra day off from work after returning last night from a short vacation. The William S. Rogers High School track in Newport, Rhode Island, was closed for construction so I was out of luck on Challenge efforts for a few days. (But got to run some other amazing routes!)
(That cross fence would make for an interesting steeple chase!)50k on a track has been on my bipedal bucket list for awhile so why not head up to Lansing High to bang out 125 laps around the rubber?
After unexpectedly calling AAA to replace my car battery I got a late start, meaning I had about 4:30 available to run 50k. I started too fast when low 8-minute pace felt like a breeze, crashed around mile 20, and jogged my way to 26.2 (105 laps) with a plan B to take a short break and gutting out how ever many more miles I had time for. As soon as I stopped I felt sick to the stomach and light headed and went with plan C — tossing in the towel to DNF my intended fun run. Since it wasn’t super hot or humid I’m guessing I’m not totally recovered from Many On the Genny + vacation, and maybe didn’t eat enough salt. At least it’s 26 more miles for the Challenge.
Logistics: The Lansing HS track is reliably open to the public and was near empty the whole time, save one runner and a two landscapers. I made up my own small AS on the ground by the side of the track and had a running water bathroom close by. I placed the “staging area” as close to the bathroom as possible so I could stop between full miles as needed and not have to take many extra steps. After the run took like 13 minutes to enter in all my split times into Webscorer.
This certainly is a challenge!! Sounds more like torture to me, but great job!
I literally had a crappy morning! 
But there’s nothing like a Sweet 1600 to improve one’s moooooooood.
With the challenge drawing towards a close and 3 courses left, it was time to finally bite the bullet and put in a hard “metric mile.” I’ve been doing my best to put in summer mileage in preparation for XC, but I haven’t been doing much speed work. I therefore wasn’t expecting much, and I was deeply dreading the aerobic distress typically associated with the 2nd half of such an effort.
I was at work up at Syracuse University, and the track is 2.4 miles on the “south side” of campus, so I warmed up to the track with my friend and off/on training partner Sascha Scott. Sascha was there in part for moral support and cheering, but she volunteered to do some 100-200m strides timed with my laps, crossing the diagonals to be at the far side of the track each time I passed the 200m mark.
After some strides and a few form drills, I toed the line, and said “Well let’s get this over with…”
Sascha was with me the first 200, and I came through a little hot in 37-38 seconds, but was settling in. I came through 400m in 77 feeling good, and with spring in my step. The second 400m was pretty similar, 77s, and 2:34 at the 800m mark, but in the last 100m of that lap, the little demons of oxygen deficiency were starting to wake up.
Coming through that lap marker, the voice in my head was saying that there was no way I was going to be able to keep this up, but at the same time, there was the fatalism of “You are here, and you are running, so you better just make the best of it.”
It of course helps when your friend is there, is going to be pushing you when you reach that 200m mark again, and you have an ego to maintain…
So that third lap went by, and it was in fact a little slower (79), and things did feel very uncomfortable indeed. But then there’s only 400m to go, and it’s just a matter of dissociation: “I am the puppeteer controlling the legs of the very unfortunate man on this track.” This worked okay until the last 100m, at which point it was most definitely my lungs that were yelling for more oxygen. Happily I had Sascha pulling me through the second half of that 75 second last lap, and the finish line eventually reached me.
Quite happy with a 5:07.7 given my training lately, and glad to remind myself about that feeling of discomfort, and how to properly manage it. Perhaps most happily, I am confident that it will still be some time (but perhaps not very much) before my son, Riley, effectively laps his old man in a mile race.
I stumbled back to the office with a 2.4 mile cooldown (with some stops to massage out some calf cramps) and was ready in the evening for a strength session.
Now that I’ve done the shortest course, I plan on doing the other book-end, the Dryden Lake Lollipop this weekend with an altogether different form of discomfort! Whee!
Finished up the challenge by heading to Dryden High School today! I went first thing in the morning before work and was glad the rain held off.
I’m happy to say I ended on a high note and earned a new mile run PR!
So Happy for you!!! Amazing job! 
Thank you!! 
