600/400 Repeats & Maintenance

This morning was just fine, temperature-wise, but it was about 20 degrees warmer than yesterday. Texas weather, Chapter 2,304. We had a very large crowd at RunTex today for the "easy" 600m / 400m repeat sets at Austin High School. We took it pretty easy going over to AHS, and my legs seemed okay after being very stiff and sore yesterday. By the time we finished the drills, I actually felt ready to do some speedy stuff.

As always, we asked for some fairly specific pace numbers, and as usual, we got the suggestion that we should hit the same pace for the 600m and the subsequent 400m repeats, and we shouldn't be gasping for air at the end of the 400m lap. We were to jog, very slowly, the 200m between the 600m and 400m intervals. The schedule called for 1:00 rest between sets.

There were several other groups at the track, so it was pretty confusing on the first set of 600/400. It was difficult to tell who was running with you, who was doing some other workout entirely, and who was merely in a faster or slower Gazelles pod. There was a large group around my pace, maybe up to a dozen people. Bonnie, Norma and Eric moved ahead to run with Frank's people, but that still left plenty of folks with me. The ones who hung up front until the end were Christine, Shannon ("tall Shannon," the "other" Shannon, the Shannon who doesn't have Teek for a running partner... I think I'll christen her "Shannon 2" for purposes of this blog), Marty and Brian. There was a fair amount of movement forward and backward between pods as the workout went on.

Gilbert had whispered to me that 1:40 would be an adequate pace for the 400m laps, so I had that in mind as we started off the 600m initial repeat. It was still dark out, so I couldn't easily see my watch to check us out at the "corners" of the lap, and so we had to rely on perceived effort. With all the runners, I couldn't take my eyes off the runners around me, so until the sun came out later in the workout, I couldn't activate the light on the watch to see how we were doing. Nevertheless, we started off pretty well, and just got quicker as the workout progressed.

I didn't intend to run hard, but I just let others set the pace except for the first and fourth repeats, when I took my turn up front. We turned in quite a good performance, though. We easily did the full complement of 5 sets of 600/400, and I was only feeling the burn, so to speak, on the very last 400m lap. It was honest effort before that, but I didn't have that focused frown on my face until that last lap. I was surprised that the times were as they were. Gilbert did give us "bonus" rest between sets of 2:00 instead of 1:00, which probably helped us keep the pace going.

The last time I did this workout was way back in April of this year, when I did 4 sets at an overall average pace of 6:54/mile. Today, we clicked them off as follows: (600,400) - (2:34, 1:47), (2:29, 1:46), (2:26, 1:35), (2:24, 1:37), and (2:21, 1:31). That's 5 sets at an average pace of 6:36/mile, a huge improvement from April. That's pretty cool.

A nice and easy jog back to RunTex gave me the opportunity to chat with Frank, and that made for a good finish to a solid workout day. We hung out with Brian and talked about our plans for training through Indy 2007, and generally it was just another great day with the Gazelles. I did some stretching with Lisa, and headed home.

For the day, 7.5 miles.

Later on, it was time for the post-Decker massage with Ron. He only found two knots in my quads today that were painful, and there were a few spots deep in the calves that were interesting, so all in all, it was much less agony than the massage visit after the 18.5 miler a few weeks ago. I got some suggestions as to exercises and massage techniques to use myself to work on those trouble spots, so hopefully I can do some self-maintenance and help myself out a bit. We also talked about some exercise strategies for after AT&T, to build some snappier speed through shorter intervals and plyometrics, but that will have to wait until after the long race in February.