Run, Run, Run

This post's title is a fun song by Jo Jo Gunne, from the dark ages of the late 60's or early 70's. Check it out if you can.

Back from that musical digression, this morning on a massively overcast morning, a pretty large tribe set out for the fartlek workout of the day. Once the group sorted itself out, the folks around my pace numbered maybe an even dozen, but it was so dark, it was hard to tell for sure. :-) Gilbert only called for 12 x 1:00 of faster bits, so this was an easier day than usual for this workout. And, with so many people, only a couple of us had to lead more than one acceleration. We were a bit more relaxed than usual, so we didn't have many fast bits that were crazy fast, and that helped make it a pretty fun morning. With just 12 x 1:00 of fast stuff, we ended up with a little over 2 miles of cooldown running at the end. Considering that we've got a 20 mile race-type effort on Sunday, people were in a pretty good mood. Maybe we're all just in denial about it...

Anyway, the stats break down like this: 2 easy miles of warmup at 9:50/mile pace, then 12 x 1:00 fast bits covering 1.67 miles at 7:11/mile pace, 11 x 1:00 recovery bits covering 1.2 miles at 9:10/mile pace, and 2.07 miles of cooldown running at 9:09/mile pace. Pretty good stuff. Total just under 7 miles at 8:53/mile overall pace.

We did striders once we finished, and a big group stuck around to join me for stretching today, which was nice. It was fun to have some more company than usual for that post-run time. Gilbert has given us some options for the 20 miler, but it looks like the plan from last year is still the one I'm going to use: Relaxed long run pace for first 5 miles and then 15 miles at MGP. I still need to ask him about a modest fast finish, and to confirm what I should use for MGP, but I've got a pretty good idea about that. The trickiest bit will be to shift smoothly into that slightly quicker gear without getting carried away and falling into a serious racing mode.

I followed up the fartleks with a visit to the gym for core stuff and upper body exercises. Today was "Core I," when I do the Roman Chair stuff, floor exercises, and the slanted rack stuff with back raises and oblique raises. Those went okay, but I can tell that it's Day Three in a row for core exercise, starting with circuit with the Gazelles on Monday, and my body is still getting accustomed to the old workload. The upper body stuff went pretty well, too. I was glad to get in to make the workout, despite a strong urge to go home instead.