Actually, it took me long enough to write this that I’m really not very sore. I sure felt like I would be, though. This morning I got up at 5 (after driving from New Orleans to Austin the afternoon before) and pulled on my running shoes. I was very tempted to skip this one, but I’m glad that I didn’t. We did a nice hill workout.

When I say “nice” I mean “arduous.” At least, it was for me. As always, a couple of the blazingly fast guys did twice as much distance as I did while barely breaking a sweat. Still, that’s why I’m here. I just have to keep telling myself that.

We started at the RunTex at Lake Austin and MoPac for a change, then ran up into the neighborhood NE of there. This time I had to stay with the pack since I had no idea where we would end up, so I did the 6/10 mile at a 9:00 pace. At the time, I thought that we were running uphill to get there, but that feeling soon disappeared when we started our actual running course. We do our usual 10 minutes of drills, and then Gilbert explains our course to us.

It turned out to be pretty simple. Down 11th (and I do mean “down” 11th, it was quite steep and dropped about 30 feet) until it ends, turn left. Up that street until it ends, turn left (we pick back up most of the altitude, say 20 feet). Head East a couple of blocks until that street ends, turn left; finally head North going down the steepest hill (losing another 40 feet) and then almost immediately climb 50 feet up to the starting point. That was one kilometer.

We had to do 3-5 of these with a 2 minute recovery between them; being that it was my first time, I was tired, and I was stiff - I only did three. Now I’m wishing that I’d done at least four, but oh well. I think that there’s definately room for improvement in my downhills with my current condition, although I’m much better now than I was back when I did the Capitol 10K.

Time: 5:18 - 5:30 - 5:22
Pace: 8:32 - 8:51 - 8:38

While I was slow compared to some of the others, I was relatively happy with my times today. After the laps, we did five sprints forward up the initial hill, working on form, then two sprints backwards up the hill. I did alright until the backwards ones, where I could stay fast pretty well for 80% of the distance and then lost it with my breathing. Gilbert said that they were good exercise in general, and great for hamstring control.

That was about it. Did the run back at a relaxed 9:45 pace, stretched, and called it a day.

Total distance: 5.4 miles

EDIT:

I heard from a couple of people that the distance was a little over a true kilometer. Checking it with my (corrected) ForeRunner measurements, it looks like it stood at about .66 miles rather than .62. On a short course though, that makes a pretty big difference. Using that number, my paces drop down by about 20 seconds:

Time: 5:18 - 5:30 - 5:22
Pace: 8:02 - 8:20 - 8:08

Maybe I should go and ride this distance for a more accurate measurement, since it is so short. I probably won’t, though; what I will do is keep an eye on my GPS readings the next couple of times we go out there and try to get a good consensus measurement.

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