Longer 1000m Intervals

This morning, it was time to do 1000m intervals on the track, for a change. We've done 1000's on a road course at Zilker Park a couple of times in the last few months, but not the track. It's both harder and easier when you're doing long intervals on the track...easier because you have lots of points to check time and pace, harder because you have to go around the first corner 3 times. Something about that last 200m makes it seem like much farther than 800's.

I was really stiff this morning, especially in my left hamstring, and took it really easy on the warmup run over to Austin High School. After drills, it felt better, but I was still a little concerned about how it would do under the pressure of higher-speed running. My group was pretty huge today, with Rich, Matt, Brian, Charlene, Jennifer, Jerry, Jan and a couple of other folks who either didn't last long, or I don't remember them just now, or I just don't know them yet. A big tribe to get around the track, that's for sure. G assigned us a goal time of 4:30 or so, then he mumbled something about 4:28. I figured we'd shoot for 4:30, since it was easy to check pace at that number, and we'd probably end up a bit fast on the last ones. Gilbert emphasized that this is more of a strength workout as we headed out.

We were way slow on the first 400 of the first 1000, and then I overcompensated for the last 600, and we ended up under 4:30 for our opening lap. After that, we settled down, and we were nice and consistent to the finish. After 5 repeats, most of the folks wanted to stop, but then Gilbert announced to us that 6 repeats was the "minimum." So, it turns out that I had a lot of company for the 6th repeat after all. :-) Everyone did pretty well, it seems, but they were glad the running was over.

Splits: 4:27, 4:29, 4:29, 4:25, 4:26, 4:27. Average 4:27, 7:10/mile pace. An improvement of some 5 seconds per interval over my last attempt at this workout. I think this probably was somewhere around an 80% effort for me, but without my HR monitor (still away getting repaired), I'm guessing based on how I felt.

I did my 3x200m striders with Brian and Rich, and then we settled in for Gilbert's requested crunches. These are the real kind, with your feet right up against your butt. Last time we did these, several weeks ago, I couldn't do very many, despite all the core work I had been doing. Gilbert recommended an additional exercise at that point, the plank exercises, and that hard work made a big difference today. I knocked out 3x25 of them, at which point we ran out of time.

Ran back to RunTex with Rich, and as usual, had fun conversation. Once I was back at RunTex, I settled in at the Stretching Platform with Sean, and we did most of the stretching routine. I felt pretty good after the workout today, so maybe whatever malady has been in my system is going away?

For the day, 7.8 miles, with 6000m of repeats in the middle.