Back with the Gazelles this morning at 6:00 am, for 900m repeats on a hilly loop at Zilker Park. Weather was dreary, humid, overcast, and cool (68 degrees). I concentrated on getting loose before, during and after the warmup run over to Zilker, doing some stretching to loosen up my quads in particular. After the usual drills, we gathered to get our group assignments and times. He prescribed 5x900m except for those doing New York Marathon in 4 weeks, and he wanted 8x900m from them. He grouped us with folks and assigned time ranges for our groups, trying to rein us in a bit, I guess. My group was Amy, Joseph and me, and our time range was 4:10-4:15. Since I had averaged 4:16 last time out on this workout, this would be an intensification of effort, especially after Sunday's race.

So what happened? Amy led the first one out in 4:07, too fast. I led the second one, at a too slow 4:18, going too far to correct the pacing. Joseph led a perfect 4:11 on the third. We got tangled up with a faster group on the fourth one, and toured around in 4:06, too fast again. The last one, I led, and I was feeling ever stronger, so we did that one in another 4:06, which felt pretty relaxed until the last hill. All in all, a very good workout. My legs felt a little tired on the first two or three repeats, but they snapped around by the end.

I'm looking forward to my massage today, to work out the residual soreness in my calves and quads. It might be painful, but it will be a great help.

Tomorrow, I'll stay on the low end of the prescribed 45-60 minute recovery run. I plan on doing 30-45 minutes, easy, including the Lakewood Drive hill. I'll do the steep hill as easy as possible, but I want to include it in preparation for the Pervasive and Motive races coming up.