I feel like I cheated myself out of this morning’s workout by having to leave earlier than I wanted to. The plan was to - after our warmup run and drills were done - do four sets of 5×400M. Each lap had a one minute break of “active rest” and each set was separated by a four minute walk. Additionally, each set was supposed to be 2 seconds per lap faster than the previous one.

The weather this morning was perfect, one of those amazing Central Texas days. Ranging from the high fifties before dawn to the low sixties by the time we were done with a gentle breeze. Gorgeous. I ran over to the track with Alex, keeping it down to a gently conversational 9:45 pace. Add in fifteen minutes of drills and explanations, and we divided up into groups for the run. I was with Jay’s pod of Moderately Paced Gazelles, and we started out with a 1:48 goal.

Time: 1:47 . 1:48 . 1:48 . 1:45 . 1:48 - 1:47 . 1:44 . 1:45 . 1:42 . 1:38
Pace: 7:10 . 7:15 . 7:15 . 7:02 . 7:15 - 7:10 . 6:58 . 7:02 . 6:50 . 6:34

On that last one I started with Jay’s group and accelerated to meet up with Frank’s faster folk in front of us, since it was going to be my last one. It only took me 100M to bridge the two groups, but somehow it didn’t feel right to go past them, since they’re mostly much faster than I am. Every lap except the last one was really quite comfortable, my breathing never got below a 3/3 pattern and I was having a good time out there.

Anyway, I headed back for my cooldown run, did a little stretching (just a minute or two, hitting the highlights so to speak) and went off to work. In the future I may start parking down there on Thursdays - I thought about it this time, but I didn’t want to cheat myself out of the cooldown/stretching, which I would have had to do if I’d done a third set (it would have added 17 minutes to my time, which is longer than my cooldown was, and I’d be starting the drive to work from further away). Ah, well.

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