2000m Zilker Repeats

I'm finally blogging on the same day as the workout. Again, I make the vow to myself to not get behind on the updates anymore. I will break that vow, of course, but it's fun to make those promises to oneself. :-)

Today, another steamy morning, a huge crowd of Gazelles gathered for the 2000m Zilker repeats. Gilbert was pleased with the turnout. I hope he doesn't take the idea to list a dummy workout on tempo race days to trick people into showing up for that workout in the future! Alex joined us again, and I did the warmup run with him and Leslie, Brian, Rachel and Emily as we made our way over to Zilker. It was quite something to see all of those folks doing the drills. This huge mob weaved this way and that as we did the drill choreography. Without any crashes or falls, we counted ourselves lucky, and finished up our strides up at the top of the Zilker course where Gilbert had set up the water/Powerade station. Gilbert told us that we should do one more repeat than last time, with the first repeat being relaxed, sharpening the pace as we moved through the workout.

We were the third group sent out, and we had a ton of folks cruising along, including Richard, who was back in the fold this morning. That first repeat turned out to be slower than usual for a first repeat. Since I led that one, I have to blame myself. The funny thing was, everyone thought I was going too fast on that first repeat, so we were all off, I guess. 2 minutes of quick rest, and we were off again. Leslie led that second repeat, so I got to follow for a change, which was nice. We picked up the pace on that one, always a good sign. The group was stringing out a little by now as we started repeat number 3. I thought Leslie was leading that repeat, too, but as we ran side by side, she told me that she was following my pace. I think we ended up sort of pushing each other along, and our third repeat was faster than the first two. Nice. We lost a few folks there after the third repeat, but pushed onward for that last loop. It was time for the "run how you feel" lap, and I found myself running on dead legs for the first half mile or so. Brad and Leslie pulled ahead of me, and I was rolling along in third place. I felt better after that, and just locked into Leslie's pace for the rest of the last repeat. I figured that Rachel was probably right on my heels, and didn't want to get passed by anyone else, so I pushed all the way to the finish, glad to be done. Celebrating with water and Gatorade, it was a good set of repeats.

The numbers: 9:01 (7:32 mile pace), 8:44 (7:17 mile pace), 8:33 (7:08 mile pace), and 8:37 (7:11 mile pace). Average repeat 8:44 (7:16 mile pace). Not record paces today, but it was a solid workout in the conditions. By the way, the distance is really 1.2 miles, just short of a true 2000m, so my calculations are based on the true distance.

Gathering up the troops, we had a pretty swift little "cooldown" run back to RunTex. I finished up with Alex, and it was good to talk with him as we ran along. I stuck around for most of the full stretching afterwards, and I had some stiff and sore muscles remaining from the circuit workout on Monday, I think. The running today took a lot of the stiffness out, and the stretching helped finish the job.

For the day, right at 8 miles total distance. This is always a draining workout, and today was no exception. Now, all we have to do is run two of these loops in succession for each leg of the Fila Relays coming up on September 1st. Oh, boy! :-)