And now, Today's 1000's

And finally, I get to the current workout. Today, I rejoined my herd for speedwork, my first fast running since the end of the Scenic run some 10 days ago. I was a little worried that I'd be dragging once the fast stuff began, actually. At any rate, the weather was as expected, so that was a fine how-do. I was surprised to see our long-lost Gazelle, the world traveler, Sean, in attendance this morning! He's been touring Europe and Great Britain (I know, GB is maybe part of Europe, but humour me) for 2 months or so, and is finally back in the States for a while. It was also fun to check back in with the Crew and to hear some of their stories of workouts that I missed while in Mississippi. I'm not sorry that I missed Wilke, but the Tempo Race might have been amusing, in a sort of gasping way, and the Bonnell Over and Back run was probably pretty entertaining.

Anyway, the warmup run to Austin High was a true warmup effort today, with Alex joining us for the first half mile or so, and those of us going slower (Brian, Rich, Rachel and Emily) were rewarded with being nearly the last people there. We split into two groups for drills, with us going to the other side of the track for our gyrations. A quick cup of water and it was time for Gilbert to lay it on us. He took pity on the collected masses, noting that he thought that everyone was tired after the pace run on Monday. I was the beneficiary of this largess, of course. He asked us to run the 1000's a bit easier than usual, offering the example of taking our mile repeat pace from the last such workout, splitting it into 400's, and then adding 5 seconds per 400 (12-13 seconds per 1000), as a pace. Let's see...we averaged something like 7:05/mile last time, which would be 7:25/mile using Gilbert's example, or 4:35/1000m. That's a good bit slower than we did this workout last time. The recovery was a slow jog back around to the start/finish line, 200 meters.

After some further confusion about who was in what pace group, we slowly got underway. My group turned out to be Rachel, Emily, Sean, Jessica, Renee, and new guys Steven and Marty. I figured we'd shoot for a consistent 4:30/1000m, a bit slower than last 1000m workout. A variety of pace leaders took us through the first 3 repeats in a very solid 4:30 average. Right on target. Renee and Jessica took us through a fast fourth repeat (slightly faster), and then Gilbert told us that "you know what to do on this last repeat." Yep, we do. Crank the last repeat. Our 200m trot complete, we blasted the last repeat pretty well. We stayed together until the last 400m, and slowly split apart under the stress of everyone's final kick. I managed to pull up with a couple of the guys at the end of the repeat, which was a good feeling. Turned out to be an excellent set of repeats, especially after my speedwork vacation last week.

The numbers: 4:31, 4:29, 4:30, 4:27, 4:18. Average 4:27, just a couple of seconds off our personal best for this workout. Good one.

Of course, we weren't done yet. Gilbert personally supervised our 200m striders after that, sending us off in pairs so he could critique our form. I did 4x200m striders, which always feel harder than the regular speedwork. I did not time the 200's today, but I guess they were in the 48 to 50 second range. I'm probably wrong.

That done, we were asked to do 100 real situps, the kind where your feet are tight to your butt. These are a lot more difficult than crunches. I was able to do 60 of them (a set of 40, then a set of 20). I don't think too many people finished all 100.

The nice and slow recovery/cooldown jog back to RunTex was once again on target for a change. On both the warmup and cooldown, we were in the 10:00/mile range. Nice. For the day, 7.4 miles.

I hung out and chatted with Sean, then Rich, for quite a while after the workout. It just seemed like there was a lot to catch up on today. After that, it was time for Le Tour, which turned out to be a crazy, but disappointing day at the races (it looks like there will be no American on the podium this year for the first time since Lance's reign began). It's nice to be back.