Hilly 1000m Repeats

On a 55 degree morning, we gathered for the Meriden 1000m hilly repeat circuit. The warmup is much shorter than usual on this workout, and after the drills, we were ready plenty early. The circuit is more or less 1000m, probably a little long if anything. It has two significant uphill climbs, including one right at the finish, and two matching downhill runs. The idea is to work on efficient running form both up- and downhill, while blasting away at something like 10k race pace. Gilbert said to do between 3 and 5 repeats, but he looked at me when my group toed the line and told me to do the full 5. Man, it's rugged when he puts the Look on you.

Anyway, I ran all 5 with Amy, with the rest of my gang either cutting the workout off at 4 repeats or going way slower (a couple did go faster). I was very consistent, with my times all within 2 seconds of 5:00. That works out to be something right at 8:00/mile pace on a tough course. I felt pretty strong, and decided to try and make up for skipping yesterday's run in my own mind today. After the 5 big repeats, we were asked to do shorter uphill striders, around 120 yards. I did 4 of those, and felt pretty strong there as well. Last, we were to do 3 backwards running uphill striders, which pretty well cooks the remaining strength out of your quads and glutes. I worked really hard on those last two backwards striders, but maintained a nice pace on all those extra bits.

The easy run back to the Lake Austin RunTex was just fine, and it was fun to talk with Sean for a change after he trained on his own last week. Alex was back today, too, and ran the repeats in a slow time (for him). He's feeling really good, so that's good to see. He's a man who really needs his running fix, after all.

Finished off the day with 4x30 crunches/leg extensions, and 2x25 back raises. Tomorrow is a 45-60 minute run, and then a gym workout. If I'm feeling great, I may turn it into a pace run. We'll see.