Okay, I'm back on the Blog. I think I'll use this avenue to publicly report on my running and training for the Distance Challenge races here in Austin, as well as the big finale for that series, the Freescale (nee' Motorola) Marathon in February 2005.

I'm doing most of my serious training with Gilbert Tuhabonye and his Gilbert's Gazelles group. It's a group of pretty serious runners who all are looking to improve, and Gilbert is the guy to get us there. Right now, I'm among the slowest Gazelles, but that's not such a big problem. Everyone in the group understands that we are all putting out the same effort at the various workouts, but we all have varying maximum speeds. So, my 1:45 400m intervals feel to me like someone else's 1:15 intervals.

I was hurt for 6 long weeks in the early summer, so I'm only now finding myself back in the shape I was in May. It's pretty exciting to track my progress ( at least it is to me), and to see the improvement just in the last month or so.

I am in charge of the Galloway marathon training program here in Austin, but I am no longer doing my primary training with them. I'm trying the Gazelles way, in hopes of dropping my marathon time to the magic sub 4:00 level. Gilbert believes that I can do it, and who am I to argue with my coach? I am still leading the beginner's group for the Freescale marathon with the Galloway program, which I'm treating as a recovery run on Sundays after my Gazelles long run on Saturdays. The main difference so far for the long runs is that there aren't any programmed walk breaks in Gilbert's long runs (we do take a few stops for water, of course), and the pace is slightly faster, although still conversational. Also, Gilbert wants us to pick up the pace over the last quarter of each long run, to learn how to run hard while you're tired. So far, mission accomplished.

So far this week, I ran the dreaded Wilke hill repeat workout on Monday, 5 x 300m steep hills, followed by 2 x 150m repeats running backwards up the last portion of the hill. It was the toughest workout in the Gazelles arsenal, and one that you are proud to have completed once it's done. Tuesday was a day off (I had run Saturday long, Sunday recovery 6 miler, then Monday hill repeats). Wednesday, we did a 4 mile tempo run, at something like 10K pace. The goal was to go out relaxed, and to try for increasingly faster miles throughout, finishing with your fastest last. I did pretty well, knocking off 4 miles in 31:37, 7:56 pace, and my second half was faster than the first half. Considering just 3 weeks ago, I did only 3 miles at an average of 8:03/mile, I'm pleased with yesterday's effort.

Today, I've scheduled a marathon paced tempo effort, 10 minutes warmup/cooldown, and 40 minutes (or so) of marathon race pace in the middle. I plan on doing that tonight, to give my legs a little more time to recover from yesterday morning's run.