2000's for Real!

Ah, yes. A truly crisp morning, 61 degrees. Nice. Nice enough to make even the most sleep-deprived Gazelle happy to be outdoors at 5:45am. Ahhhhhh...

Sorry, I was dropping off into dreamland there for a second. Anyway, I was surprised to find out that we had 2000m repeats at Zilker this morning. I thought we had our first AT&T pace run, but we were soon disabused of that notion. Gilbert sent out the Chicago folks for a 7 mile pace run (easy 2, half marathon paced 5), the NYC/Dallas people for a 10 mile pace run (EZ 2, harder 8), and the AT&T'ers were sent out to Zilker for 2000's. Yee haw.

I'd guess we had maybe 15 people making their way over on the trail, in the deep darkness, but it was a good warmup. I wasn't as talkative as usual (I know, you're stunned!), but I needed to focus on letting my body relax and warm into the day's efforts. I was still a bit stiff and sore from the nice 15 miler on Saturday, and it just takes longer to get rolling nowadays. Drills drilled, we went back to the top of the Zilker 2000m loop and found Bernard and Kenny waiting on us to administer our run. We got the usual chatter about running the 2000's at "10K race pace," and they prescribed 3 x 2000m for today. The first one is supposed to be easier, and the idea is to have your last one your fastest. I like to try and make each successive lap a bit quicker, so we'd see how that went. My "PR" for this workout is a 3x2000 lap average of 8:26/lap.

There were a lot of new folks there today, and most of them didn't know what sort of pace or group to run with. In the confusion, I just took off with a few folks, and got started. Turns out, we were the fastest group all morning long. Now, I'm an okay runner, nothing spectacular, so it is very strange for me to be in the lead group for any workout. Weird, but sort of fun. I started out with Emily, Javier, Nelson, Colleen and Christina. By the end of the first lap, which I led for the most part, it was pretty much Nelson, Christina and me leading the way. Shortly after, the others came across, but my little tri-pod (that's a little too twee, I think) ran together for the rest of the workout. Nelson and Christina pushed the last two laps, and I hung in there well enough. Just 2:00 rest between laps, and we were really cruising along today. I was happy to see that I had narrowly met all my workout goals today.

Splits: 8:35, 8:19, 8:18. 8:24/lap average, a new "PR," with a mile pace for the fast stuff at 7:00/mile exactly. I measure the course as 1.2 miles, fractions short of a true 2000m.

I met Eric on the way back on the cooldown run, and Nelson, Eric and I talked about Gazelles, the training, and aches and pains. Spouting the company line, I prescribed weight training to help with the various musculo-skeletal issues. Yeah, I know I should be more diligent about practicing what I preach...

I did the stretching after donning a sweatshirt (it got chilly once we stopped), and chatted with Colleen, Alex and Lisa. It was a fun day, and again, I was pleased to see that my conditioning is coming around.

For the day, 6.9 miles. Due to scheduling issues, I've got two easy days here in the 'Hood, and then the tempo race on Thursday. With the nicer weather, it's a pleasure to run in the mornings, so hopefully, I'll be in full compliance with this week's schedule.