The Reggae Shuffle

This morning was one of my favorite workouts in the Gazelles canon, the fartlek tuneup run. It was glorious out there again today, in the high 30's, crisp and clear. We ended up with a giant mob of runners this morning in our pace pod, which was pretty fun. Rich and Rachel were back today, and it was good to see them moving pretty comfortably. We also added a bunch of Frank's crew to our number. At any rate, we did two easy miles at something like 9:40 average pace, and then started our cycle of a fast 2 minutes and a recovery minute for 10 cycles on the trail. With so many people, no one had to repeat a turn in front of the pack, and that made it a little easier on most of us. I think the group was pretty consistent in their turns at the front, and we ended up with 3.6 miles of fartleks, at an overall average of 8:06/mile. That probably works out to be around 7:15/mile pace on the 2:00 accelerations, with 9:30/mile recovery jogging, more or less. No matter what, it felt fine out there, and we all felt pretty good during the workout and after. We finished up our faster running west of the footbridge, and so we got in a good 1.3 miles of recovery cooldown running at the end, at about 9:25/mile pace. Overall, it was right at 7 miles, 8:45/mile average. Good job!

Once we were back at Auditorium Shores, we knocked out 5 striders and then called it a day. Gilbert had mentioned doing the balance drills, but maybe he changed his mind while we were out there. There's a continuing theme of nervous energy in the group as we get ever closer to the marathon, and there's lots of talk of race strategy, split times, pace, nutrition, and the weather. Increasingly, it looks like we're going to have pretty good weather for race day, but long range weather forecasting is about as reliable as reading tarot cards, so we'll see about that.

I did most of the stretching routine once we got done, and headed home. Another day closer...