Track Practice Today

It's 7am, about 21-degrees, and in a couple hours, the Woodruff Family YMCA Triathlon Club is going to head out for some track work today.  Track really isn't my best thing, but I've done some research on the Internet, and I do fartlek intervals on the roads reasonably often in my own workout routine, so I suppose that I know enough to lead us through today's experience.


That said, I posted a message to the social networks of the world--Facebook and Google+--looking for a little help on this from someone who knows a little more than me, but the Interwebs totally failed me.  In retrospect, I probably should've posted that to Trifuel.Com too, but I didn't even think of that until just now.

Argh.

I'm hoping somebody out there with a Track background has some time to give me some advice. I coach the local YMCA Tri Club, and my club-mates want to do a track workout this weekend.  But while I know a little about running intervals, track-specific stuff is, to say the least, not my best thing.

So. I want to do something like 4 or 5 miles total, and I can't decide on a base interval distance and/or design. I've been considering doing a warm-up and then either:

- Half-mile intervals with an easy 440 between.

- Quarters. I have no idea how much rest, though.

- Some kind of ladder (440/880/1320/1-mile/back down)

- 4 x 1-mile repeats and then 4 x 440 intervals

Question: Which of these is most appropriate for guys and girls who run but who aren't necessarily coming from a running background? Anything else I'm missing here?

Thanks in advance.

So anyway, we basically did halves last week, and I guess that we're gonna do halves again.  I personally think of half-mile intervals as pretty standard intro-to-intervals stuff.  Even more than that, though, we did halves last week and managed to come away without any injuries, and bottom line, I want to come away without any injuries even more than I want to put together a really great workout today.

That said, I'd personally really like to do the one-mile repeats with the 440s for speed-work at the end.  I'm just not sure if that might not be too much for the crew today, especially in weather that's likely to literally freezing.