Meriden 1000m Repeats

This morning was warmer, but still not awful for August. We met at the Lake Austin RunTex for the short warmup to Meriden and 11th and the 1000m hilly repeat session. It was a tiny group this morning, maybe 15 people in total. Like Wilke, people tend to find reasons to miss this workout since it's a tough one. Unlike Wilke, I actually like this workout, since it seems to me to directly help us with racing and learning how to recover from a hill or hills in the middle of a race. There was a high percentage of the really fast Gazelles today, too.

Easy warmup run and drills all took place in the dark, and then we were ready to roll. The truly fast folks went off in two packs, and then Alex and his people took off. That left Margaret, Gretchen, Amy and me for the "Lion Food" group. Gilbert told us to go out easy on the first repeat, and to go for 5 x Meriden in total.

I mostly followed on the first lap, and it turned out to be a bit slow, but that's not totally a bad thing. I wanted to get to 5 repeats today, and hopefully have my last lap be my best. After that first slower lap, I pulled ahead about halfway through the second lap, and pushed up the last hill to get my pace down closer to what I usually do. The next two repeats were very consistent and faster, and by then, I was making the pace. Amy and Margaret had had enough by then, but Gretchen agreed to join me for lap number 5, which was just like 3 and 4. So, a good job by the end of the workout.

The splits were 5:27, 5:14, 5:01, 5:01, 5:01. Average 5:09, or 8:02 mile pace. Pretty solid job.

We finished off the day by pushing through 5 x 150 meter uphill striders and 2x150 meter backwards running striders up the same hill. Those weren't too bad, actually. I was feeling some tired quads on the cooldown run back to RunTex, but it was a good workout. Alex and I were both happy that even after a spirited pace run yesterday, we still had some snap in the legs today.

Good set of stretching followed, and then it was time to call it a day. For the day, just 5.4 miles, but hilly miles they were!