Meriden 1,000m HillPeats

This workout is one of my favorites, despite its lung-searing climbs at quick pace. I like the Mt. Bonnell long runs, too. And yet I fear and dislike the Wilke mountain repeats. Go figure. I believe that the Meriden 1000m hilly loops help us learn several things which are directly applicable to racing, including recovery on the run after a tough hill and shifting gears for flats, downhills and uphills. A nice compact bundle of running challenges, and we get to do them over and over. I know that for many Gazelles, this is among their least favorite workouts, but that's just what human nature is. We've all got our favorite workouts, and we all have at least one workout that is just not a happy adventure for us. C'est la vie.

To the workout, I guess. It was wonderful weather out there this morning. Crisp, clear, 49 degrees. Perfect running weather. The weather folks were correct, for a change, and it was nice. Broke out light gloves and my Distance Challenge vest for the warmup and return cooldown runs, and after getting sweaty during the repeats, that was a good idea. Kept the gloves on throughout, just for fun. We all gathered at 5:45am, and after standing around for a while, we headed out for drills and the warmup. Turns out, Gilbert has moved the start time for us back to 6:00 am except for a few longer morning workouts, TBA. Cool. An extra 15 minutes of sleep!

Drills drilled, we waited on G's arrival. He explained the loop directions for those who haven't done this workout before, told us to take the first loop easier to make sure you knew what the course was, and then he'd tell us how fast to run the rest of the loops. 5x1000m prescribed for marathoners. So, I partnered up with Brian, and we were off. It stayed totally dark throughout the workout, which made the steep downhill on the backside of the loop sort of dicey, but it worked out okay. I sort of ran how I felt, and after we finished that one up, I was surprised to see a quick 5:02 lap time. That's more or less the pace that I finished up this workout with back in September, so I was already excited. We stuck to a strict 90 seconds between repeats, walking around for "active rest," and had a nice set of laps. We took turns helping each other through the loops, and Brian was a really good pacing partner for me this morning. It's cool to start finding compatible folks for the speedwork, so that we can build pace groups for the track, etc. We did a good job of picking up the pace on the last two repeats, and we were pretty consistent on the first three. Nice. It was a "PR" for this particular workout, always cool to get.

Splits: 5:02, 4:57, 4:59, 4:50, 4:46. Average 4:50 lap for 7:41/mile pace.

After a cup of Powerade, we went right into the 150 meter uphill striders, and did 5 of those, concentrating on hill running form. Gilbert didn't have anything bad to say about my striders today, which I took as a good sign. I've been doing well on hills these last several weeks, so maybe all of his coaching is taking effect? While we were doing our last uphill strider, I was watching one of the faster guys doing one of his backwards uphill striders. I saw him drifting farther and farther to the side of the road, and I called out to him, "Car!" When he didn't react, and aimed even more towards the parked vehicle, I called out again, but he just plowed into the hood of the car, in backwards running slow motion, and sort of slid off to the side. I was laughing as much as one can while running up a hill. Funny.

After watching that, Brian and I were careful about our backwards striders, and did them just fine. It's a little like towing your car by the time you get to those backwards striders, but it's a good kind of burn in the quads and glutes. I put on my vest again, and we did a nice easy cooldown jog back to RunTex. My only wish for this workout is that the warmup and cooldown were just a bit longer. Maybe I'll use Pete's alternate cooldown loop next time, which makes for more like 2 miles of cooldown. As it is, this is a fairly short mileage day, at 5.5 miles, but it's action-packed, I suppose.

I got bundled up once we got to the cars, and stuck around for a good stretching session, working out some of the spots left from Saturday's Bonnell run and those from today's workout. It was a fun day at the running office. Richard and Marcy are in the last stages of their NYC taper, so it's cool to see how they're getting more excited about their race. Just 16 weeks for me...