Goin' Round and Round

This morning, we got to do some shorter, snappier intervals on the track for a change. I know that for marathoning, the longer stuff is much more applicable to training, but it's sure fun to do 400m repeats. At least it is for me. It was nice and cold this morning, 36 degrees at the start, and so it was a "Superman tights" kind of training apparel deal. A pretty big crowd was there at RunTex, even though a lot of us had run the 20 miler on Sunday. Gilbert told us to run these repeats just to get some snap back in our legs, dropping 2 seconds per lap between sets, and not to try to get down to 5K pace by the end of the workout. That was good news to me!

A nice gentle warmup and drills (at the crowded track!) left us ready to run. A fairly huge group of people clustered in my pace neighborhood, and I told them my vague idea of aiming at 1:50, 1:48, 1:46 and 1:44 for the four groups of 5x400m repeats. 1:00 rest between repeats, and a full jogged lap between sets. Okey dokey. In the pre-dawn darkness, we were off.

It was confusing with all the competing training groups jockeying for track position on our wildly disparate workout regimens, but we managed to lock into a reasonable pace for the first set of repeats. For a change, it was cool to be able to run at a peppy, but not breathless, pace on 400's. The first set of 5 repeats were knocked out at an average of about 1:52, which was a little slower than planned, but at least we were consistent.

Set number two was solid, too, and we had a good number of people willing to help set the pace. By the end of that set, I could actually see my watch, so it got easier to lock into a pace after that. The second set was about 1:48, so we were back on schedule. Emily had to leave after that set...this is a long workout, and we ended up losing folks due to time constraints as it went on.

A lot of folks had to leave after set number three, but we did some good running in that one. By then, the other training groups had cleared out, and it was just the Gazelles out there, plugging away. Again, the pace got quicker, but it still felt awfully comfortable out there. I'll take that as a good sign. Third set average was 1:45, so we were doing a good job of slowly ratcheting up the effort.

For the fourth set, I was happy to see that 6 of us were able to stick around for the full Monte, so to speak, and after the first three repeats at more or less the 1:44 target, we got frisky when we saw that the workout was coming to an end. The last two laps were fast and then faster, and that was fun to end the long day on some hot laps. Except for some heavy legs at times, I felt great out there, so this was an excellent workout coming after the stresses of the 20 mile race on Sunday. Last set average was 1:40.

For the full 20 x 400m, we averaged 1:46, or 7:06/mile. Very nice following up a big race effort. The individual splits: 1:53, 1:53, 1:50, 1:51, 1:52, then 1:49, 1:47, 1:48, 1:44 (oops), 1:46, then 1:43, 1:46, 1:46, 1:47, 1:44, and finally 1:46, 1:43, 1:43, 1:37, 1:31.

A big tribe ran back to RunTex, nice and easy, and after some stretching in the sun, we were done. Norma was a spectator at the workout (she has the Houston marathon Sunday), and she was nice enough to treat us to some bagels while we stretched. Awesome!

For the day, 9.5 miles.

After that, I visited Gold's for upper body and core I workout. Not much to report there, except that I did go, and I'm still plugging away at my project to be able to do 10 pullups. That's sort of pitiful that I can't do that already, but I'm working on it! On the way home, I dropped by Academy and bought a foam roller torture device, so I can continue to work on my quads. This afternoon, I go to visit Ron for my post-race massage. That should be a fairly painful experience, but I know it's for my own good. :-)