Recovery Run + Strides

Today, Gilbert assigned us a very different workout. Instead of the usual marathon pace run or fartlek workout on the Monday after a long training run, he assigned a run of 40-70 minutes, easy recovery pace, followed by 20-30 x 100m strides, concentrating on form. The idea of this workout, if I understand it correctly, is to let the muscles limber back up in the recovery run, and then to bring them back into snappy form with the strides after all that lumbering long run training.

After I got my massage from Ron this morning, I went to the trail at Town Lake for my workout. I really wanted to run as much as possible on something not asphalt or concrete, to give my legs a bit of a rest from the big pounding. I started about 11:30 am, under sunny and warm conditions, maybe mid-70's. I took off, going east on the loop from Auditorium Shores (First Street) to Longhorn Dam, and crossing to finish on the First St. bridge. I guessed that would be about 5 - 5.5 miles. I was hoping to run about 60 minutes of recovery running, plus the strides.

I set my HR monitor to tell me when I was going too hard, and set out on my journey. It's been a while since I've run this much without training partners, so it was a little strange today. At any rate, I fell into a good rhythm after about a mile, after my legs loosened up enough to run fluidly. I stopped at the water fountain at Longhorn Dam for a quick drink of water, and then moved on. I checked out the floodgates that were open there, and once again marvelled at the power of the current. It was really loud down there.

For some reason, the song stuck in my head during this easy run was The Who's "Pinball Wizard," and by the time I finished up the run, I think I had remembered all the lyrics in order. What a strange song to pop up!

The final total on the recovery run portion of the festivities was 6.6 miles, at an average pace of 9:50/mile, which is about right for true low HR recovery running. I was sweaty in the heat, but I wasn't breathing super hard, either. After 5 minutes of walking and drinking cool water at the RunTex water stop there at the Zero marker, I was ready for the strides.

On the first strider, I felt totally clumsy, stiff and awkward. I counted off 100 steps, which would serve as my 100m marker. Turns out that was at a nice landmark of stone steps. I took 30 seconds or so of easy walking between each strider, and moved through the workout. It was funny to be running back and forth like that, as people were playing with their dogs on the grass field there. Without other Gazelles, I did stick out. Back and forth I went, getting to 10 striders. I kept thinking of reasons to stop doing this, but I just kept on and finally knocked out 20 x 100m. By the last 6 or 7 strides, I had found smooth form again, and my legs were feeling a lot better by number 20. I guess the workout served its purpose!

Total day was 7.9 miles, with the striders. It was a good way to get back to running after the long one on Saturday! Tonight and tomorrow is supposed to bring big time thunderstorms again, so the morning Gazelles circuit workout will be totally interesting if there's really bad weather.