I think that’s the most 400M repeats I’ve ever done. Cool. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Today I knew I had an early morning meeting, so I drove down to Austin High and did about 2-3 laps of warmup on the track, meeting up with David and Leslie. That let me leave without the 15 minute run back to RunTex, which gave me more time to work out. We chatted a little, then the rest of the gang started to show up and we headed into our drills.

On Tuesday Gilbert gave me two pointers - first to move my arms more (but move my trunk less), and second to engage my glutes more often. At one point today he said that my arms were doing well, and I’m pretty sure that at least yesterday I was doing alright with my glutes because they sure were sore today! Specifically, deep inside my right one. Maybe I should think about a massage one of these days. It was a little achy during the warmup, and started annoying me during the drills, but it didn’t get any worse all day so I think its just tired and overworked.

It was good to see everyone in the morning group again. I ended up running with Jay’s Pod of Moderately Paced Gazelles - only four of us today, but wonderful company - something I needed, given my workout yesterday evening and the weather (cool-ish but really humid). I had thought that we were doing the same basic work as our last 400M set, with a break every five laps, but this morning Gilbert said that we were going straight through with 60 seconds of “active rest” (ie: jogging) between each one.

Our stated goal was to maintain 1:45, and it was a good thing that we had Jay with us - he can set the pace like you wouldn’t believe! Even with my Forerunner I’m pretty bad at gauging shorter distances, but Jay kept us within a couple of seconds of our goal for every lap. For some of these we ran in lane two, so our official 400M times might be a second or two faster, but that’s getting pretty picky.

Time: 1:43 - 1:43 - 1:42 - 1:43 - 1:43 - 1:44 - 1:42 - 1:43 - 1:41 - 1:41 - 1:42 - 1:41 - 1:41 - 1:38 - 1:41
Pace: 6:54 - 6:54 - 6:50 - 6:54 - 6:54 - 6:58 - 6:50 - 6:54 - 6:46 - 6:46 - 6:50 - 6:46 - 6:46 - 6:34 - 6:46

How’s that for consistency? I felt good for the first few, but by about number six I was starting to really feel the heat and the pace. This was my first real solid speedwork in about a month, and I think it showed. We talked about quitting after 12, then did one more, then figured that we might as well go to 15 (with Gilbert’s blessing, naturally).

I actually thought that I’d make #14 my last one since I was feeling a little weak - my breathing on the last 100M was pretty rough, and I was afraid that we were going slowly, but I hung on to finish right behind Jay and was pleasantly surprised by the time (my fastest lap of the day). For the last one, I tried to keep up as Jay kicked it into high gear around the second bend, but I had nothing left - again, my breathing was pretty bad (about three steps per in/out pair) but I just concentrated on my form and finished five seconds after he did - he had a great kick!

A couple of times near the end I found myself looking up a bit. I don’t know why - at the time I was feeling a touch dizzy (probably a little overheated) and it seemed to help, maybe it was opening up my chest that did the trick? Who knows. Anyway, after the last one I drank some PowerAde, cheated my cool-down (only did about 200M, nowhere near enough), did a tiny amount of stretching, and jumped into the car to make my meeting. I was able to do more stretching in the shower, which helped.

My glute is almost back to normal, and my calves are a little sore - they were sore last night as well, even with a ton of stretching, I guess the hills just do that to me still. Tomorrow I want to do some solid core work, and then Saturday morning will be 10-12 miles of running, a half hour of stretching, more ab work, and then I’m meeting up with Marcus and Bill at 9:30 to do about 15-20 miles on the bike with them as they try out some route options for this year’s Urban Assault race. Some of you may remember that last year I enjoyed it, then sprained my knee and had to cancel my NYC run - this year, I’m support staff only.

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