Finally, a Pace Run on Monday!

It's been quite a while since I got my carcass out there on Monday mornings for a run of most any sort, much less the pace run. With the heat, if I don't do my run early, it's very unlikely I'll do it at all, and that's been the case since Indy for me. So, after a good Tuesday through Saturday workout schedule last week, I arrived, bleary-eyed, at RunTex at 6:00 to join the marathon peeps for the pace run. The weather was...never mind.

Gilbert prescribed a 7 mile pace run today, 20 minutes nice and easy, and the remainder of the I-35 loop at "run how you feel" accelerated pace. Not a progressive run, just steady pace after that 20 minute introduction. So, off I went, with Jan, Patrick, new Mike (hereinafter referred to as "Arkansas Mike"), and Richard. Frank and Anne went ahead on their own faster pace. We had a nice 20 minute introduction, rolling along at about 9:45/mile pace, and then our 20 minutes were up, and it was time to get going. Richard raced on Saturday, so he took it easy today as a recovery run. Jan and Patrick ran an intermediate pace and Arkansas Mike was in between Richard and JanPatrick. When we got ready to go at 20 minutes, Sean had caught us, and so I took off with him. We ran the first pace mile together, and then he took off. I maintained a steady pace after that. It seems that I averaged 8:10/mile for the 4.8 miles of pace running, which was very encouraging. Overall, the almost 7 miles was covered at a pace of 8:38/mile.

We finished it off with 4 striders at Auditorium Shores, and then I did some stretching at RunTex with Mike. He's an interesting guy, and it was good to get to know him a little. After saying my goodbyes to Frank, Patrick, Jan and Alex, it was time to get home. Despite the fact that it was really tough to get up this morning after the weekend of sleep deprivation, I'm glad I got out there today. These runs are really great for me, even if I'm not doing a fall marathon, and I need to keep them in the rotation of weekly workouts.

Tomorrow are 2000m repeats on the moderate road course at Zilker Park. It's been a long time since I've done those, so as always, it'll be interesting to see where I am.