Four minute k - Part 3

Saturday, 6 December 2025

While I was comforted by the fact my first real test showed I wasn't too far way, I had a niggle in the back of my head that reminded me of the time I was training for the World Ultimate Frisbee Championships.  The whole team had done fitness testing at the NSW institute of sport, and although I'd performed really well in the endurance componant, in the vertical leap test I was dead last, meaning the difference between my standing reach and my jumping reach was the smallest of everyone.  To address this before we went away to Hawaii I got a program and went to the gym two or three times a week for 8 weeks.  At the end of that I tested it again and found that I hadn't even improved a single centimetre.  Which goes to show that sometimes things  just don't turn out how you want them to - even when you do the work!

So I was nervous that I wouldn't improve but I still plugged away for the next 4 weeks doing those 2 sessions in various locations as well as the runs in between.  As the interval lengths were similar  I could compare times from week to week and it didn't help that I really didn't see much change until finally this week my 400metre time ducked below 1:40 for the first time.  Until then I'd been in the low 1:40s up to 1:50 - much slower than the training program said I should be doing them to make a 4 minute k.   Buoyed by this I thought I'd brave another time trial. My biggest fear was that it was actually going to be slower than the first time but I figured I still had plenty of time to train if that happened.

Co-incidentally, the day before I planned the time trial, a new pair of shoes arrived in the mail.  I hadn't been able to justify Nike Vaporflys so I had ordered a pair of carbon plated shoes from a cheap Chinese brand that Jon was using.  By some fluke they fitted perfectly so I decided to give myself all the possible advantages by doing the 2nd time trial with these shoes AND at an actual tartan track at the Domain Athletic Centre.