6 x 800m Intervals, Fast Version

This morning was another glorious weather day. Clear, cool, maybe 60 degrees. There was a slight breeze from time to time on the backstretch of the track, but not too bad.

A large group of Gazelles gathered at RunTex at 6:00 am, including lots of new folks. It was good to see Peter Rauch there, still basking in the glow of a well-run Boston Marathon. He got to do a relaxed run on the trail instead of what we were doing. For the rest of us, Gilbert had two different workouts: Circuit Training, 3-4 x800m circuits (for those not racing the Texas Roundup 10k this weekend, and for those not doing Indy Mini); and 3-6 x 800m @ 10k pace, 2:00 rest between, for those of us racing in the next two weeks. We had a brisk run over to Austin High, and I had fun talking with Frank and Alex on the way over. Gilbert could see us better this morning, so he stopped the entire group on one of the drills ("High Knees") because we weren't doing it right. That's always funny when he catches us going through the motions. For the record, I think I was doing it right before he stopped us. Believe it or not.

My pace group for the 800's was Amy, Shannon and Susan. I thought we'd be shooting for 3:35 or so for our intervals, because I was the fastest 10k runner in the group, and that was faster than my 10k race pace. However, they had other ideas. We were okay on the first one, at 3:39. Then the fun began. We were quite erratic on these, doing 3:29, 3:25, 3:33 for the next 3 repeats. The women had to leave, so they pushed the last interval. I clicked number 5 off in 3:26, running with Shannon, while Amy and Susan ran away from us on the backstretch. Gilbert told Alex, Frank and I that we should do 6 repeats since we were doing the half marathon next week. So, I lined up with Alex, and we were off for the last repeat (Frank felt a little beat, from 5K hangover, so he sat out number 6). Alex left me behind immediately, but I tried to hold the gap at least. I was surprised to see my last interval at 3:20. For all 6 repeats, 4800m of repeats, I averaged 3:29 per repeat, 7:00/mile pace. The whole workout was basically faster than my current 5k race PR. Crazy, man, crazy.

I felt okay throughout the morning, though, and despite my HR getting cranked up to race levels, I was within myself and my limits for the 800's. It was a heck of a workout, that's for sure. This was probably the last hard workout before Indy, so it was good to really crank some hard speedwork out. The run back to RunTex was with Frank, Alex, Kelly, Marci and Henry. We were moving on, too.

I did the full stretching ritual once we finished, since I didn't want to jump into my car right after running like we did. It was a really good day at the running office. Total mileage 6.7 miles, 8:12 average pace, including warmup and cooldown runs on the trail.