800m Repeats (Long Time Coming)

This morning felt slightly more comfortable to me, so I'm guessing the humidity was down a bit, along with a slight temperature break. Anyway, we gathered at RunTex at 6:00am for the warmup run to Austin High School. I ran over with Alex, Gretchen and Amy, and we took it nice and easy, a true warmup run. When we got to the track, the faster folks had just started the drills, so without a pause, we jumped right in and did those. After we got done, Gilbert had us do additionally the 400m warmup where we do 50m easy, 50m stride, etc. all around the track.

We grouped up for the 800's, and Gilbert assigned my group to aim for 3:30/800m. 2:00 walk/jog rest between the 800's. Today, my group was Margaret (back from vacation), Amy, Gretchen, and Marci. I was the designated pacemaker, and after the first 400, I realized we had taken it a little too easy, so I pushed the second 400 to end up with a slightly slow first 800. After that, the next 4 repeats were very consistent and right on target. Marci was either short on time or recovering from an injury, and did only 2 repeats. Margaret and Gretchen were done after 4 repeats, and Amy was done after 5. I went ahead and did one extra one, to get to 6 repeats, and I was a little faster on that one. All in all, a really good set of repeats after a long break from them. The last time I did this workout was right after the Schlotzsky's 5k race in late April, so it's been a while. I wanted to make sure and do a little extra after cutting Wilke short on Tuesday, so mission accomplished.

The times: 3:34, 3:29, 3:30, 3:29, 3:27, 3:24. Average pace was 3:29, or 7:00/mile pace. That's pretty good for the "off season." Gilbert told me today that Freescale training actually starts in September, so I've got lots of time until that cranks up.

After the 800's, I went right ahead and did 3x200m striders with Alex, and Amy joined us for the last one, as she had been doing them slightly off our times. I felt nice and loose during those, which I suppose is the point of doing them.

Our cooldown run was nice and easy, too, with Alex and Amy joining me. We laughed a lot about a variety of topics, none of which will be repeated here. Pete, Alex and I did most of the stretching routine once we got to RunTex, and we had a nice long conversation about stuff, as well. Kelly was there, too, finishing up her 7 miler as she reacclimates to Austin's weather.

Good day after a relatively bad day at Wilke on Tuesday. Total mileage 7.3 miles. Saturday is Mt. Bonnell, and Gilbert said that we should do it, as a "recovery run," but to start at Mopac for the shorter version of that run, about 10 miles. Sure thing, coach!