Fast Running, 800 meters @ A Time

Today, it was sort of nice out there, just 70 degrees. The conditions made for a more pleasant tour of the Austin High track, that's for sure! A pretty small crew cruised over to the track from RunTex, including Rich, Shannon, Amy, Emily, and Jessica. Brad and Jan joined us after they ran over from Brad's house. Drills and then it was time to go. Rogue Training was there doing their 2 mile time trial on the track, so it was a little crowded at first, but it never bothered us while we were doing the workout.

Gilbert grouped us up (Rich and Shannon got to go with faster people, Brad joined us, and Jan ran with another group), and it was time to run. No goal times, except that Gilbert said we could take it a little easy today, 4 to 5 repeats of 800 meters. The last time I did this workout was way back in December, and we did 8 x 800m at an average of 3:26/800m, with a fast lap (for me) of 3:13.

We found a good pace on the first interval, and managed to slowly speed up over the course of the workout. Just 2 minutes rest between intervals was challenging, but by and large, this wasn't a max level of effort today. On the very last interval, I managed to roll to a tie for a personal best for an 800m repeat lap, which was nice to see.

The splits: 3:35, 3:34, 3:32, 3:30, 3:13. Average 3:29 / 7:00/mile pace. So, we were a little off our best performance at this workout, but it was still a good effort. Our "easier" pace was still pretty good, so it was another sign that our fitness is continuing to improve. Next Monday, the fall marathon group starts doing their thing, so those of us not doing a fall marathon will become a slightly different group of workout peeps. I think I'll follow the general path that I did last summer, doing their pace runs on Mondays, but just shortening them up a little (if they do 10 miles, with 5 easy and 5 hard miles, we can do 7 miles, 3 miles easy and 4 at pace...or similar iterations of the formula).

For the day, about 6.5 miles. For May, a new record for this month, at 131.7 miles, a 38 mile increase over last year. For the year so far, I'm 113 miles ahead of last year's totals, some 23 miles per month more than last year's average total. So far, so good.

I had to leave fairly quickly after we were done, to pick Sarah up from a sleepover, so I didn't get to stretch. Ugh.

Gymboree

After dropping Sarah off at home and assigning some chores to the kids, I dashed up to Gold's for the Wednesday gym visit. Today is the easier core workout (floor exercises as always, plus the back raises and oblique raises on the "rack.") plus the upper body workout. The core stuff worked out just fine, and then it was off to pump iron. Bicep curls are coming along. On bench press, I've backed off to 85 lbs on both sets of lifts, and I'll keep it that way until I can do 2 x 12 reps at that weight. I'm close, though. Dumbbell flies (those are tough after the bench press) and lat pulldowns went smoothly, as did tricep pulldowns. It's coming together piece by piece, and I don't feel like such an interloper any more. I feel like I belong, more or less.

Tomorrow, I'll run in the 'Hood so I can sleep in a little, and then it's core and leg weights at the gym. I feel pretty good, but I need to catch up on my sleep, that's for sure!