Mile Repeats, Repeated

Our spate of cooler mornings ended abruptly this morning, and we had humid, 75 degree conditions with which to contend for our mile repeat session. Before we left RunTex, Gilbert spent some time outlining what was coming up in training, and told us that the "Jay Group" would be broken up for the 400m repeats coming up on Wednesday. Anyway, it was off to Zilker for the rolling mile repeats. This has always seemed to be more about strength than speed, but we certainly time them.

Richard, Rachel and Shannon weren't there this morning, due to travel (Richard and Rachel) or Sunday trail race (Shannon), but the remainder of our crew was there for the fun today. Warmup run and drills accomplished, we were ready to go. The crowd was quite resistant to getting going on the drills, though. There was a whole lot of personal inertia working to keep up from zipping through the drills. Gilbert announced that 3 or 4 repeats would be plenty for us. We chose to hear that as "3, maybe 4."

Brian and Rich got promoted to Frank's group today (along with Shannon), so my usual group is now a smaller one, with Amy, Emily (Rachel, Richard) being the gang. The three of us took off after Frank's peeps, and rolled through the first, counterclockwise, repeat in a relaxed 7:19. After a quick 2 minute's rest, we went clockwise, and Emily and I counted the second mile in 7:00. I felt tired, but another 2 minutes, and we were off on the final mile. Gilbert told us as we finished interval number 2 that we were to do 3 repeats. Amy backed off on the last interval, having done the one mile open water swim at Lake Travis yesterday, and Emily likewise decided to choose her own pace, so I took off, trying to close the gap between us and Frank's group. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it, but they were still faster on lap 3. I came in at 6:52 on the last lap, which was a mile repeat personal best for me. The 7:03/mile average was another PB, although with an asterisk, since we only did 3 x 1 mile today. I probably could have done 4 repeats if we had had to, but I'm glad he took it easy on us all the same.

We regrouped with Powerade and water, and it was time to head back. I ran back with Emily, and we caught Amy about halfway back. We were all relieved that the workout was over, and it was good to get back to RunTex. I did most of the full stretching regimen there, and then had to head up to the middle school for the 7th grade awards ceremony. I did clean up a bit and put on fresh clothes before strolling into the gym there. :-)

For the day, 6.9 miles. My goal for Tuesday is to just do the scheduled workouts, an easy recovery run of 45-50 minutes and a visit to the gym.