Redemption comes in many different forms. For me, today, it was this series of 2,000M repeats over around the Zilker park soccer fields. Yes, that’s two thousand meters, not two hundred. The warmup run got me from my pre-workout heart rate of 84 up to the mid 150s, and I became slightly nervous: while I had to hold myself back on Monday, I was feeling more achy today than I had in a while. Nothing serious, just post-race buildup. Combine that with the fact that I only had five hours of rest last night (took me forever to get to sleep), and this might have gone a lot worse than it did.

So. Warmup, drills, conversation, and powerade. I started setting my expectations low, then tried to snap myself out of it with not much in the way of success. Still, I hung around as Gilbert divided us up into groups - he left a bunch of us together and said to just “run easy easy, 80% effort” and he’d split us up for the next lap if we needed it.

Normally my instinct, especially when I’m feeling insecure about my performance, is to latch on to a semi-large pod of people and trust that they’ll be able to pull me through if I need it. This time, for some reason, I found myself running up at the front of the pack with Patrick and Margaret. I know that I’m feeling a renewed desire to do better than I did last Saturday, but I wasn’t really pushing myself that hard - maybe I’m just getting more aware of what a “hard” push really is? That’d be nice. Still, I ran up with them and tried to just focus on keeping good form and relaxed breathing.

The first lap took 9:17 for a 7:28 pace, and it felt really good. I decided (still not sure why) to make an effort to “run tall,” I think I have a tendency to slouch while I’m running if that makes any sense. I kept checking that I had my chest up, and my shoulders back, and it seemed to help. We had two minutes of rest which I spent tossing back a few more shots of PowerAde, and then the three of us were sent out together again.

I should mention that Patrick and Margaret often run one group faster than I have been doing, at least when we’re split into smaller pods. Based on my performance today, I’m going to try hanging with them next time as well - maybe its time to see if I can get a little faster.

Lap two was more of an effort, but I was careful to keep my breathing under control and we all came around smoothly for an 8:56 (7:11 pace) lap. After I finished, Gilbert called me over and said that I was still slapping the ground a little when I ran. Now, I know that I’m a lot better than I was, or even than many runners are, but there’s always room for improvement. It wasn’t so much a gait issue as a force issue - he didn’t want me to fix it by changing my footstrike, just by being more gentle to the asphalt.

For our third and final lap, things got a little more fragmented. We’d had an extra minute of rest trying to reform, so Jan and Jay took off ahead of us by 15 seconds or so. My first thought was that they’d give us something to chase, and maybe we’d catch them at the end. My second thought, as we got closer, was that if I wanted to I could always pull back and run this lap in with them. My third thought was somewhat surprised as we pushed past them about 600M around the lap, and I continued to feel fine.

This one was harder than the last one, no question about that, but my breathing never became labored even going up the hills. Very regular, sure, but not like I was scrambling for air. Patrick started to pull away at that point, and I tried to keep up as best as I could without sacrificing form. I was being more careful to pull my leg up as soon as it started to strike, focussing on high knees on the uphills and butt kicks everywhere else, and making sure not to go too fast. With about 600M to go Patrick took off and I just followed at my own pace; I could feel my quads getting sore, probably from a combination of the race conditions in Dublin and the extra care I was taking, so I didn’t want to end up pushing too hard.

When I came across the line, Gilbert said that I was doing better - that’s always great to hear. He’s not shy about praise when you’ve earned it, but I’ve yet to hear him give it out when you haven’t; he’ll praise a good effort, but if he says you’ve improved on something, you can rest assured that you’re doing it right. That last 2000M took a surprisingly fast 8:38 to finish, which means that I held onto a 6:57 pace that whole time. It really didn’t feel all that fast either, still at that 80% level (well, maybe 85)which is another very encouraging sign. I felt strong, energized, and yes, somewhat redeemed.

When I left to head back to RunTex I made the mistake (well, kinda) of chatting with Pete - mostly about Habitat for Humanity. The jog went very well until he turned around to go and retrieve a forgotten singlet. Now, he’s one fast cookie, and while I didn’t feel any pressure at the time, I realized once he’d gone that we’d been running just a wee bit too fast for me to cool down properly. Put it this way, I stopped to retie my shoelace and spent the rest of the trek actively running slowly, and still averaged under 9:00. Yeah.

All told, this was a damn good workout. I pushed myself, worked on form, had a good time, covered about seven miles, and was still out of there before 7:30AM, a time when not that many years ago I’d just be rolling out of bed. Let’s hear it for adult-onset atheletics!

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