Fast Miles, One at a Time

I'm sitting here at home, still shivering a bit after this morning's mile repeats with the Gazelles. It was nice and cold out there, between 35 and 38 degrees while we did laps of the Zilker mile loop. Some folks had trouble getting out of their cars to start the festivities, but eventually, we did our easy warmup over to Zilker. Amy and Shannon joined our group today since we're all doing the long run early on Friday, and we all ran over at a very easy 10:00/mile pace, letting our bodies warm up nice and easy. It seemed that everyone was feeling it today, and even the drills didn't go as far as usual. We were cutting them short in distance. Oh, well. Soon enough, it was time to group up for the mile repeats. Rich, Amy, Shannon, Jennifer and I were the marathoners in our pace group, but we had 4 or 5 of the half marathoners with us, too, so our group was pretty big. Gilbert told us to take the first repeat nice and easy, and to do a total of 5x1 mile (half marathoners had to do 3x1 mile). 2:00 rest between. He suggested a pace of twice our 800m repeat average, plus 10-15 seconds. That would be about 6:54 + 15 seconds = 7:09/mile at the fast end of the range.

The first repeat was indeed pretty casual, if you can call 7:42 casual. Then, alternating directions on the loop each time, we got faster and faster. We took turns leading the way at various points during the repeats, which was nice. We dipped under 7:00 pace on the fourth repeat, only the second time I've done that during this workout in the last year, and then really blasted the last lap, in a surprisingly fast time. I thought I was just struggling on the last lap and everyone else was feeling good, but it turns out we were just really pushing things.

Splits: 7:42, 7:16, 7:09, 6:59, 6:51. 7:11/mile overall pace, a new mile repeat "PR." Amy, Shannon and I finished right together on the last lap, with Rich a few seconds ahead of us. Excellent workout!

A few cups of Powerade, and then we all jogged back to RunTex. Everyone was in a good mood, and it was just a nice day. I'm glad I came down for this workout, that's for sure.

8.7 miles for the day. This will be a big mileage week, especially if I get out on Christmas afternoon for an easy 60 minute recovery type effort.