400's, New Pace

This morning, I had to alter the routine a bit, since I had to drop Sarah off at school early for their band trip today. I didn't have quite enough time to get all the way to RunTex for the warmup, so I went directly to the track, and ran back along the track until I met up with the gang coming towards me. Turns out, Brad and Jan had left from Brad's house, so they were ahead of the main pack, but it was still fun to run back along with them to Austin High School. The rest of the troops arrived pretty quickly, and after drills we were ready to go. Gilbert officially split up my group, and left me with Rachel, Amy, Emily, Jessica, Brad and Richard, a still sizeable group (in numbers only, now! No jokes about our relative size!). Richard and Amy weren't here this morning, though. He also assigned us pace ranges, as I suppose he's grown weary of waiting on us to crank up things quicker. Alex will appreciate my happiness now that we get to report our times as seconds only (e.g. "96-98" instead of "1:36 - 1:38"). Rachel decided it must be because we are no longer in the three digit range. Whatever the case, that was what we set out to do.

It was muggy and warm out there, but by now, we're growing accustomed to it. C'est la vie. I led the first couple of laps, and then we started taking turns leading the way. That helped a lot, because for whatever reason, it's a little easier to follow someone around the track than to make the pace yourself. Psychological? Jessica was the only one who stayed with it for the last 2 repeats, and she was a big help making the pace go. The others had had enough after 10. I don't really blame them. Gilbert told us we could stop after 10, but I still felt good, so he let Jessica and me finish the dozen originally assigned repeats.

It wasn't terribly different staying within the new pace zone, but I suppose it just eliminated the normal first couple of repeats that end up in the 1:40-1:41 range usually, and dropped us right to work instead. Gee, Coach knows what he's doing, huh? :-)

Splits: 1:37, 1:37, 1:36, 1:36, 1:35, 1:37, 1:38, 1:38, 1:34, 1:35, 1:32, 1:29. Avg. lap 1:35, which is a new record by a couple of seconds. Last lap is not a PB, but it's close. All in all, I'm pleased with the workout. This is the sort of thing I need to be doing, pressing during the summer to build strength and speed and deemphasizing endurance so much. So far, so good.

I ran back halfway with Rachel, Emily, and Jessica, and then turned around to go back to my car at AHS. It was sort of strange not finishing up with everyone else, but that's the way it goes, I guess. I did the stretching routine once I got back to the track, and that was the end of a good workout. About 6.2 miles total. With this run, I exceeded last year's May 2005 running totals, so that's pretty cool.

Gymtastical Stuff, too

After that, I was off to the gym to do the second half of the gym workout from yesterday. I gobbled down a Clif Bar with my Endurox, and was ready to go. I did the floor exercises for core stuff, this time doing two sets as usual. The first set showed me that I was a little sore from yesterday, but that soon worked itself out. I also did the back exercises and oblique raises with weights on the "rack," just a single set of everything. Then, I moved on to do upper body. I figured I'd definitely see a retreat in my ability to handle those exercises, and I was right. I wasn't the Incredible Hulk or anything, but I had built up to certain weights and reps that made me feel pretty good. It's a drag to have to retrace the steps to getting back to those levels, but that's my fault. Anyway, bicep curls, bench, dumbbell flies, lat pulldowns and tricep pulldowns all were lower weight than before, and in some cases dramatically lower reps (bench). Still, I did two sets on everything, and I was pretty satisfied with how the workout went. Hopefully, I'll move back up fairly quickly.

Now, if I do the Thursday recovery run and visit the gym tomorrow, I have a chance to nail the entire weekly schedule. Sounds easy enough, but I still have to do it.