400's in the Humidity

Today, we gathered as usual for 400m intervals. Nice warmup run over to Austin High School with Shannon, Amy and Joseph, I think. Anyway, drills drilled, we were ready for the festivities. I was still a little stiff from Tuesday, but felt pretty solid. Gilbert assigned me to do between 8 and 12 x 400m, since I'm racing on Saturday. The rest of my subgroup could do between 10 and 16, but all save Richard chose 12. Gilbert suggested 1:45 for our pace.

And we were off! My group was pretty large, with Sandra, Amy, Shannon, Margaret, Tall Richard, Richard S., and one other woman whom I did not know. Richard S took off and ran his own pace for the entire workout, so the rest of us cruised through the laps. We did some talking during the early 400's, but it got quieter as the workout progressed. We did an excellent job of staying on pace, and kept our recovery walk/jogs to a strict 1:00, so I'm happy about that. We picked it up considerably for the last two intervals, which were two that I paced, coming out of the peloton to pick us up at the end of the workout. (I led the first 3 or 4, too, but then turned over the pace work to the others). Good work!

The times? 1:46, 1:44, 1:44, 1:44, 1:45, 1:45, 1:44, 1:45, 1:43, 1:45, 1:39, 1:36. Average pace was about 1:44, or 6:56/mile pace.

We thought we were done then, but Gilbert called for us all to do 100 situps. I did 2x25 of the standard curlup crunches, and groaned through 25 true crunches with people holding my feet on the ground. Finished off things with a new one where you lie on your back with legs extended, and you sort of rotate your legs around the legs of your training partner, who is lying opposite you. Hard to explain, I guess, but it was pretty tough after everything else.

The nice return run to RunTex was with Tall Richard and Amy, and we chatted the whole way about music and fun subjects like that. I stretched at RunTex with several folks, and chatted a bit with Gilbert, Patrick and Jan. Then, I peeled off the soaking shirt, got dry, and headed home. It'll be weird to be away from Gazelles for the next week, but it'll sure be fun to be in Asheville, NC, instead! I'll report "from the road" while I'm there. We should be doing some nice trail running and a lot of guitar playing and singing. I can't wait!

Stats for the day: 6.7 miles, 4800 meters of intervals at average 6:55 mile pace. Warmup/cooldown running at 9:30/mile, just right.