Monday, on a sort of spooky weather day, it was time again for mile repeats on the rolling Zilker Park road course. As I drove down to RunTex, there was all sorts of lightning flashing in the distance, but it turned out to be a distant thing for the whole morning. Temperature was just okay, as Texas weather changes once again. We got some misty stuff during the repeats, but nothing dangerous. It made for some spooky footing going up the clockwise direction, on the steeper hill, but other than that, no worries. I get ahead of myself, though.
Gilbert told us a funny story about his race experience in Dallas over the weekend, which cannot be repeated here, but we'll just call it a cautionary tale. Then, he sent us off. As usual, I needed the full warmup to get loose, but by the time we had drilled the drills, I felt pretty good. Maybe a little heavy-legged, but nothing debilitating. Most of my long-time pace people weren't there this morning, so I got a whole new group today. As we settled in, it was Nelson, Steve, Norma, Bonnie, and Christina. Gilbert told us to run the first repeat a little easier, and then to find a steady pace. He also wanted us to do one more repeat than the last time, which meant 5 x 1 mile for me.
On our first repeat, we got pulled along a bit chasing down Eric, Braz and Jerry, who started with us, but pulled away. That caused us to go a little quicker than usual for the first mile. Alternating directions, we sped up a little on the second mile. I was trying to find the 7:15 pace that Gilbert suggested to us as the workout progressed, but we just kept running hard instead. Finally, on lap four, I followed others in our group, and we ended up running slightly easier, but still not 7:15. On the last lap, of course, it was "run how you feel" time. By the halfway area of the last repeat, I had settled into second place, behind Norma and just ahead of Nelson, and that's how we finished up. It was a very strong set of mile repeats, and everyone finished pretty much together, even on that last harder one.
My splits were: 7:07, 7:05, 7:04, 7:13, 6:48. It was a PB for 5 repeats at 7:03/mile average pace. The 6:48 wasn't a single lap record, but it was still pretty cool to be strong enough to push the pace down that far at the end of a hard workout. I finished most of the repeats feeling fairly good, recovering pretty quickly, but after that last one, I had to spend a little extra time catching my breath.
It was great to find new recruits for future pace work on the track and on road-based Gazelles workouts. We're now deep enough into the AT&T marathon training that it is becoming clearer who is running like each other, and that will be helpful the next time we hit the track (next Wednesday, for instance). The cooldown run was pleasant, but a little fast. Nelson and I sort of got going a little too quickly. Oops.
Full stretching afterwards, and my day was done. It was a really great day at the running office yet again. I know it can't last, but it's sure great for my mental outlook in the meantime. For the day, 8.8 miles. The rest of the week is basically getting ready for the Bison half marathon on Sunday.
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