Zilker 1000's and Gym [Entered 6/14/07]

Wednesday was the usual weather situation, and a goodly number of folks joined up at RunTex for Zilker 1000's. Gilbert is slowly increasing the length of the interval distances these first weeks of Chicago training, and today was, to me, the easier version of 1000m repeats. They seem easier on the road course at Zilker than on the track. Still, you've got to focus to keep the pace right.

Very reasonable warmup over to Zilker was followed by drills, and we were ready to roll. I'm still trying to figure out just what group Gilbert has assigned me to (is it "B" or "C?"), but for now, I'm just finding the familiar pace pals and going off with them. He called for a minimum of 5x1000m, but he hoped that we'd have time to get in 6. He also said that he wasn't looking for us to be "huffing and puffing" at the end of each repeat, but just wanted us to be consistent. Of course, he then said he wanted our times. Funny.

Anyway, I took off with a large crowd, but by the time we finished that one and jogged/walked across the grass back to the start of the course, everyone had strung out into much smaller clumps of pacers. I was running around Amy, and we were sort of a pod of two. Times bounced around a bit, but were pretty close. Gilbert told us to finish up with number 5, due to time constraints, and suggested that we go faster on the last one. Okey dokey. I was able to pick it up quite a bit for number 5, which made me feel pretty good.

I was happy with my results today. My HR numbers showed that I wasn't redlining it, and my last repeat was the only one where my HR climbed into the 90% neighborhood. The splits were 4:33, 4:29, 4:36, 4:30, and 4:12. Average lap was 4:28, or 7:12/mile pace. Not bad for early speedwork. My legs felt fine, and I think I'm starting to come around again.

A relaxed return to RunTex with Brian, Frank and Brad made for a fun overall day. I knocked out some stretching and chatted with Lisa for a while, and that was it for the Gazelles morning. I scored 7.3 miles total for the day.

After that, I went to the gym to make up for yesterday's miss. Some good core workout stuff (floor exercises, back raises on the rack device, and the full set of "planks"), and then the full upper body routine. The upper body stuff is coming along, but as with all of this, patience is a virtue.

It was a good exercise day. Tomorrow is 50-60 minutes of EZ HR running and the gym (core/leg weights).