so much for recovery

Every winter, my team, as with many others in NYC, moves indoors to the Armory for speed work. The Armory has a 200m banked track, considered to be one of the fastest there is. What makes a track fast? Who knows. But anyway, I have alway been eh about doing these workouts. For one, it's far. This excuse doesn't really hold true anymore since I moved uptown. It take me no time to get there. Another, we start at 8pm. That I'm still not crazy about. I've gotten very use to running early or running during the day. Mostly, it's a track and it makes me feel like a hampster. I would almost ALWAYS just run outside.
Anyway, all this aside, after a few conservations with Kelsey who is the coach and Loren, who is my other coach, I decided this year I'm going to try it. Loren feels like the one thing lacking in getting me to my BQ is speed. Not a whole lot, just maybe a bit more. Perhaps this will push me over the edge. Or leaving me crying next to a very small rubber covered oval. I guess we'll see.
Last night was the first workout. I did not want to push myself. Luckily, I'm good at running within myself even if I'm with a group who wants to race the workout (for the record, this was not the case last night though it is known to happen). After a warm up and some drills, we got down to it.
8x400 with 200 active recovery. I started out on the conservative side, 1:57, and worked my way down to a 1:41.
spits:
1:57, 1:52, 1:50, 1:50
3 minute rest
1:45, 1:48, 1:48, 1:41
Last night was really just to get use to the track a lot of people are coming off marathons (some off 2, some off 2 AND a 60k. You crazy people). So I felt good about it.
No soreness today. A bit tired but that's to be expected. Did yoga when I got up and will run easy tonight.

NJ is looking more and more like a possibility since I know a few others who are game. That will make the long runs through the winter a bit easier.
And I'm close...so fucking close to my time.