Fartleks [Entered 5/8/06]

Wednesday was the final run in Austin before the big Indy trip this weekend. Alex, Frank, Richard and I met up at RunTex for fartleks. Gilbert told us that 5 miles was plenty, with warmup and cooldown, and "no more than 10" x 1:00 accelerations during the run. It turned out to be quite the spiffy little run. We arbitrarily chose 15 minutes of warmup, mainly to avoid starting the first fartlek repeat on a hill. I know, wimpy, but what the heck! As is the custom, we took turns leading the way, but it seemed that Alex hung out at the front the whole day. I was happy to draft off of someone for the most part. The workout went by in a flurry, and we ended up with 5 miles total at an average running pace of 8:40/mile. Considering the warmup/cooldown was probably close to 3 miles, that meant that our fast bits were pretty quick. I felt fine throughout, and I guess I'm ready for a PR assault on Saturday. We did some striders once we finished, and then Alex and I stuck around for stretching. Once again, we hung out with our fellow Gazelles, who were returning from a 1000m repeat session on the track.

We got our last pre-race guidance from Gilbert, and that was it. My instructions are to "run how I feel" for the first 7 or 8 miles, then to pick it up on the Speedway and start passing people, and then at the 10 mile mark, I should "GO!" That's the sort of info that I like.

Off to Indy!