So this time, in run camp, we … didn’t go to AHS. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, I get to RunTex a little before 6:00 as always, and do a little stretching. The night before I had taken a hot bath to help relax my calves, but afterwards I didn’t want to take the time to ice down my ITB like I usually do. I figured that the bath would be enough. Almost, but not quite. But more on that later.

We start out with a warmup run from the S. First bridge to Lamar and back again. Gilbert cautioned us to keep it slow, that he would be watching us. There and back is 1.2 miles, or 11 minutes at a 9:10 pace. My calves were a little sore to start with, but they loosened up as I went out - running on the trail is easier than running on roads anyway.

Once we got back, it was time for drills in front of the Stevie Ray Vaughan memorial. One of them in particular really started to hurt my ITB, so I stopped to stretch it. Gilbert said that I should be doing the drills, and I explained to him why I wasn’t - he didn’t seem convinced and figured that it was a form problem during the drill. I don’t remember if I’ve told him that my ITB still bugs me - I’ll have to send him an email about it to make sure.

Anyway, I finished out the rest of the drills and did some more stretching, concentrating on my calves and ITB. Then Gilbert announced that we were going to do a four mile tempo run. It may sound odd, but I’d never specifically done a tempo run before. He said that we should aim for about 20 seconds slower than our 5K pace, which for me would be about 8:55 or so. We went from the S. First bridge down to MoPac and back.

I went out too fast, of course, and had to pull back. Its hard, considering that there are only one or two other people in the mornings who run as slowly as I do. The first mile was close to on target, at 8:48. That’s a little misleading however as I was definately slower by the second half to compensate. By the seond mile, my ITB was getting sore. This isn’t good - I’ve become pretty good at judging it, and it was alright, but if it got much worse I would have to stop and walk back so as not to injure it further.

At the turnaround, about 1.95 miles actually, I stopped and did some ITB stretching. I didn’t want to do it because of the delay, but I’d much rather finish slightly slower and healthy than faster and hurting. Or even worse, slower and hurting! I did a couple of 20 second stretches, then headed back again. My time for the second mile totalled 9:50, with the pause.

Mile three was better. My ITB was feeling good, and I was feeling strong. I caught up with and passed at least one other person in the group who was lagging, and kept it up for an 8:56 pace - almost perfectly timed. I was breathing 2-in, 2-out, but not puffing to do it. Mile four was uneventful; I did .9 miles in 7:42 for an 8:33 final pace, picking it up just a little bit on the way in. My total time was 35:16 so I averaged 9:03 for the distance.

My splits looked quite different on the ForeRunner, but when uploaded then I saw that the very thick cloud cover had caused a lot of misplaced points. A little correction in TopoFusion though, and everything straightened out (and got more consistent as well, which was good to see). Our total distance for the workout was 6.35 miles.

Popularity: 1%