Repeat Mile Repeats

This morning, I joined my old gang on the Tuesday/Thursday Gazelles crew for speedwork. On the schedule were mile repeats at Zilker Park, the standard rolling course for such. It felt somewhat cooler this morning, but that was probably an illusion after yesterday afternoon's 107 degrees. I ran over to Zilker with Amy, Shannon, Michael and Alex, enjoying a relaxed run while we chatted about any number of things. Drills drilled, we grouped up for the work. Gilbert lumped a bunch of us in the last group together, and announced that 7:30/mile was a good pace for the first one, and to see what happened after that. He said that 4 was the maximum if we were racing on Sunday (the IBM 10K). The group was Gretchen, Karen and Marcy(?), who all left us on the first repeat and formed sort of their own group, followed by the rest of us in a pack. That last pack was Amy, Shannon, David, someone I didn't know, and me. There may have been one other person with us, but I can't remember that right now.

Anyway, we rolled through the first repeat in a relatively relaxed 7:36. David pulled away at the end for a slightly faster finish, but the rest of us were together. The second one was clockwise, which went up the steeper hill early, and on that one, I pulled away with David, running how I felt, and finished in 7:16. Another 2 minutes of rest and a couple of cups of water, and we cranked out number 3. On that one, I was more or less chasing the Gretchen/Karen group, and I finished in a surprising 7:06. Everyone else finished nice and consistently around 7:30. As we lined up for number 4, Gilbert told Amy and Shannon and David that they should stop. I eagerly asked if I should stop, too, and he said "No, you should do all 4." Well, I tried. I paired up with Gretchen, and we were off on the last repeat. I tried to keep a steady gap between us, since she's faster, and I did a pretty good job. I thought I was struggling, and figured I'd come in on the last one slower than number 3, so I was pretty stoked to see 6:57 on my final repeat. It was a perfect set of repeats, each faster than the one before. Granted, you're supposed to be consistent on them and then pick it up on the last one, but this sort of distribution of times is okay with me for now.

Average pace for the repeats was 7:14/mile, an improvement of three seconds from a couple of weeks ago when I did this workout with the Chicago people. I'm obviously happy about how strong I felt, even though I was gasping at the end of the fourth repeat.

Michael, Alex and I ran back nice and easy, although it was slightly faster than the trip over to Zilker. Gilbert joined us as he caught up to us on the way back, doing his warmup for his own mile repeat session that would follow with Bernard. Richard was finishing up his 7 mile recovery run at the same time, so we ended up with 5 people by the time we reached RunTex.

Once we got back, Amy suggested that we join her for situps, so I drank my Endurox and settled in with Amy and Alex for core exercise. I did 2x40 crunches, 2x40 leg extensions, and 2x25 "Jan" crunches, with 2x10 pushups and 2x20 back raises. I must be growing accustomed to those, because they weren't all that bad today. I did a fair amount of the stretching, too, just for preventative maintenance.

So, it was a good day of running after my day off yesterday. Total mileage 7.7 miles, with 4 x 1 mile repeats in the middle of it at 7:14/mile for spice. Easy run tomorrow and the gym, and fartleks on the trail on Thursday. I'm starting to look forward to the 10K on Saturday.