400's and Good Books

So Coach Tommy sent me out yesterday with my first truly "hard" track set - which included some nasty 800's, 1200's and 1600's.
I could have run outside, as it is a little less boring, but, as you know (unless you live in a cave in the South Pacific) our weather here in the Big Smoke has been a wee bit challenging for runner's the past week - although that sounds pretty lame when you consider over 300,000 didn't have heat or power while my biggest complaint was how the roads sucked to run on...), so, here was my choice:

Warm

                                                                       or

Not Warm

kids actually skating down the road - just the road I want to run on. Not.

I chose warm.
And while I was in the Dome, running solo and feeling sorry for myself - especially as for some reason the track was, judging by my 400 splits, quite long (as it couldn't be that I am simply wayyyy slower - hahaa), I got to thinking about 400's (ya, pretty random but what else do you think about when running than, well, running? I do also think a lot about food, especially desserts; I often drift off thinking about how I would rather be swimming that running intervals - which is ironic, as when I swam yesterday morning all I could think about was running intervals on the track (this must be some undiagnosed medical condition); sometimes I even think about all the unfinished house chores I have been tasked by AM, but surprisingly, those thoughts are extremely fleeting. So, ya, I tend to think about running when I am running [note how there is absolutely no intention to intrude on any copyright issues herein: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running [this is a really great book by the way - while I personally don't think it rises quite to the literary status of the your humble author's pedestrian (pun intended) writings herein, it has been a NY Times bestseller for quite some time: NY Times Book review- well worth adding to your quiver of running books, although I would personally start with John L Parker's classic, Once A Runner, one of my favourite books out there (64 x 400m's? really? WTF??); or, if you just want pure a "endurance", switch it up and read what is likely my single favourite, "the one book I would bring to the desert island": The Road by Cormac McCarthy - epic and sparse and beautiful and haunting).
Anyway - I digress: on the track yesterday while thinking of running and having each 400 split called out by the George Brown track coach (I had jumped into their varsity workout) - I wondered if there was any 400's harder than the ones I was doing...
turns out there are:

And now I fear what could be harder than next week's 800's...

see ya on the roads,
Mellow Johnny