Mile, Repeat, Mile, Repeat, Etc.

This morning was slightly cooler, but still very humid. In the car, waiting to get going, I felt a strong urge to just curl up and take a nap. However, out I went, and joined the gang for the warmup run to Zilker Park. I was in the last group on the warmup run, and we ran gently indeed. By the time we got there, most of the folks had started their drills, so we sort of formed our own little group and drilled away. I missed Gilbert's pre-game talk, but I figured 4-5 repeats would be about right. He did say that for today, a true 80% effort on the repeats would be correct. My group was pretty much the usual, with Charlene, Brian, Rich, Jennifer and Carrie as a a guest runner. Rest between repeats was a short 2 minutes of "active rest," or walk/jogging.

The first mile was intentionally a bit slow, and then we started finding the pace range. We took turns setting the pace. I never felt totally comfortable, but the pace never felt that awful. I was surprised to hit the fourth repeat as we did. At that point, I thought I was done, but Gilbert told us that 5 was the minimum. So, I set out on repeat number 5, intending to run it nice and easy. Of course, once I was 200 yards into it, I was already tracking down Charlene. That last repeat felt pretty darned easy most of the way around, until the last sharp little hill. I was really surprised to see that the 5th repeat was actually right on target. Good for me, I guess.

Splits: 7:33, 7:15, 7:09, 7:03, 7:16. Average 7:15/mile, which is actually pretty good.

A cup or two of blue Gatorade, and we were off on the cooldown run. It took us a hundred yards or so before our inertia got us going at something more than a walk, but soon enough, Charlene , Brian and I were moving along pretty well. Gilbert passed us on the trail as he did his warmup run over to RunTex, and Charlene got picked up in his slipstream. Brian and I finished up the cooldown run, but it was a little quicker than usual.

For the day, 8.6 miles, with 5 miles of repeats in the middle. I finished things off with the full stretching regimen with Sean there at RunTex. We had a good talk, as usual. It turned out to be a good day at the running office, and that was a welcome change after a couple of shaky runs last week. I think the source of my difficulties last week was a nutritional deficit. With the heavy mileage that's starting to pile up, I need more calories per day than I'm used to having. I was slow to figure this out, of course. So, this week, I'll try to boost my caloric intake to see if that helps the way I feel before and after workouts.

This week is mostly easy stuff after today, aiming at the Motive Half Marathon on Sunday. I'm looking forward to Motive, as it's usually one of my favorite races, despite the big monster uphill in it from mile 4 to mile 7.