Fartlek Tuneup (10 x 1:00)

It was rainy this morning, temps around 55 (and dropping during the run). A surprisingly large group of Gazelles met for the festivities. We took a longer warmup than usual, somewhere around 2.2 miles. Then drills, and we grouped up for the 10x1:00 fartlek workout. My group was much larger than usual, with Amy, Henry, Jan, Joseph, Jeff (?), Chelsea, and Susan. We took turns leading the fartlek accelerations as we cruised around Auditorium Shores, and had a lot of fun chatting with each other on the recovery bits. My GPS glitched out for some reason, so I have to estimate the individual splits, but we averaged around 8:17/mile on the Fartlek section (about 2.3 miles), including the recovery bits, so we did well there. Afterwards, we did 5 striders to finish off the morning. I felt really good to be out there, and I hope that's a harbinger of things to come. Total day somewhere around 5.5 miles.

It was a fun little workout on a rainy and dreary morning. Saturday is the usual easy 4 miler, perhaps with chanting this time, then a controlled 3M Half Marathon. Gilbert gave some of us a preview of the last two weeks of training, and we get to kick back. Next week, we have the cool ladder workout on Thursday (2x2000, 3x1000, 3x400), something else on Tuesday, and an easy 7-10 miler on Saturday. Marathon week, we have 3x1000m at 10-15 seconds faster than marathon race pace on Tuesday, just to sharpen the spear, so to speak, and then on Thursday, we'll do a 2 mile warmup and about 20 strides. All of a sudden, the marathon is RIGHT HERE!