Amazing What A Little Sleep Will Do (1000m Repeats)

This morning, it was actually slightly cooler, but conditions still were about the same as the last couple of weeks. We had a pretty big crew gather for the warmup run to Austin High School, and I ran at the very back of the pack with Alex, Amy, Patrick and Jan. Drills, and then it was time to get to work. Once again, Gilbert emphasized that we should strive for consistency, at something like 80-85% effort. The workout was 2-6 x 1000m repeats, with 200m jog between (and additional walking as necessary to get up to 3:00 between intervals). I was shooting for 5 repeats for my own workout. We had a huge pack at first, with all sorts of people in it, but as the workout went on, by interval number 3, we had a much smaller pack cruising with me. Jan, Richard, Patrick and a handful of other folks were just ahead of us, blasting away for some reason. I guess they were feeling good. My little pack was Shannon, Amy and me. We finished with some very consistent times, too. My average pace the last time we did this workout was 4:35/1000m, so I figured that would be a good target for today. Shannon (as well as most of the runners) cut it short at 4 repeats. Amy and I did the 5th one, and I think Jan knocked out her 5th repeat on her own, too, just ahead of us.

Our times: 4:34, 4:32, 4:35, 4:25, 4:30. A very nice set of work, average 4:32 (7:16/mile) for 5000 meters of intervals. Later, I noticed that my HR numbers were very good as well. My recovery between intervals was way better than normal, which is a sign that I was doing this the right way today. I'd say 80-85% effort was about what I was doing today.

We did 2x200m striders afterwards at the track, and it was time to call it a day. Amy, Alex, Jan and Patrick joined me for a true recovery run back to RunTex. With the heat, we've all gotten much better about really doing cooldown runs instead of blasting back after a hard workout.

Altogether a much better workout than on Tuesday. I'll keep trying to get my full amount of sleep, because that's something you can't compensate for in a morning workout.

I did the full stretching routine today afterwards, and found very few tight spots, which was a good sign. This has been a good week for exercise and running, and I've got just two workouts left. Tomorrow is cycle/gym day, and Saturday is a very hilly 10 miler. Sunday will be a full day off of exercise.

Oh, yeah, I finished off the morning with an hour of yard mowing, which I'll call cross-training.