800m Repeats

Another Wednesday, another fun speedwork session. Meeting again in the pre-dawn darkness at 5:45, we had a relaxed warmup over to Austin High School, and did the drills. We shared the track again with the Rogue Training folks, who I believe are beginning their Freescale training. I couldn't figure out what their workout was, but it seemed to be something of a longer paced run. Hard to say, really.

Anyway, Gilbert was running late, so we got going on our own, since we knew what we were supposed to do. 6-8 x 800m, and our times were well known, as well. I grouped up with my 400m group from last week, "new" Amy, Carrie, and Jan, and we took off, aiming for a 3:28-3:30 average. It was difficult to gauge pace in the dark on the track, so our first repeat was slightly slow. After that, we were erratic, but stayed in the range of proper pace. We took turns pacing, and everyone did good work in that regard. Since I'm not doing a fall marathon, I stopped at 6 repeats with Jan, and Amy and Carrie finished up the full 8. It is a good group to run with for me, and we even were right behind Richard's group for one or two repeats. I must admit that I didn't have much left for a fast last 800, though.

Splits: 3:37, 3:28, 3:25, 3:27, 3:29, 3:26. Average pace about 3:28, or 7:00/mile pace.

Jan and I did our 3 x 200m striders after we cooled down a bit, and after listening to Gilbert speak to the Chicago folks about the 4 week taper, we were off for the cooldown run back to RunTex. Frank, Carrie, Patrick, Jan and I ran back together, which made for good conversation. It's exciting to listen to them get ready for Chicago, doing all the pre-race worrying, but I'm glad I'm not doing a fall marathon.

Once again, we were drenched upon completion of this running festival, but we all felt good. I did the full stretching routine, and after a few more conversations, I was off. For the day, 7 miles total, 3 miles of fast intervals at 7:00/mile pace. Easy run tomorrow, bumped up to over 60 minutes, then 14 miles on Saturday, long run pace.