Thursday, October 19, 2006

Fartleks [Entered 10/21/06]

Thursday, it was nice out there. Cool enough that you got chilled once you stopped running. Anyway, I met up with the Thursday crew for fartleks in preparation for the Sunday 10 miler. Fortunately, Amy was there, so I had someone to run with. We were to run 12-15 x 1:00 fartlek accelerations with 1:00 jogs between them, after warming up to a specific point on the trail. Off we went, in the darkness of the predawn trail. Within 100 yards, Amy and I were dead last. I mean, no one anywhere near us, except Sean, who decided that we'd be fun to run with today. It was quite humbling after being near the front of the pack in the Monday/Wednesday AT&T group.

We had a nice warmup over to the Milago apartments, and then commenced our fartleks. I was feeling pretty good, which was a good sign. Sean dropped back for a moment, and then caught up with us by about the 5th fartlek acceleration. I pulled away from Amy near Mopac, and started playing the "yo-yo" pacing game with Sean until I was done with my 15 x 1:00 intervals. For my cooldown, I turned around on the trail, and went back to run with Amy to the finish. She wasn't that far behind, and it was a lot more fun to run in with someone than to do it alone.

I was surprised to see that I was averaging right at 8:00/mile for the fartlek section, including the intervening jogging bits. My 1:00 accelerations were in the 7:00/mile pace range. It felt pretty comfortable, and despite being tossed out the back of the larger Gazelles pace groups, it was a good workout.

Gilbert started early with the faster people, so when Amy, Sean and I got to Auditorium Shores, we skipped striders and joined in with the balance drills. Those are always fun.

For the day, 7.21 miles, average pace 8:42/mile, including warmup, cooldown, and everything else. I skipped stretching today, and got home instead.

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