It was a quiet crowd at RunTex this morning - a lot of the regulars were out for one reason or another. That’s too bad really, because it was beautiful outside! The morning heat (with extra humidity on the side) that’s been plaguing us recently has faded and now we’re back down to the low 70s at dawn, which is a much nicer environment to run in. I must have left my ForeRunner on in the car again because the battery was dead this morning, but other than that I was ready to go.

I’ve noticed that for the last couple of weeks, I’ve had more of a spring in my step than I’m used to. On our drills, for example, I’m bounding up instead of plodding along. This is, if you were wondering, a good thing. They’re coming a lot easier too, to the point where I’m showing much better form and thinking about it a lot less than before. I wonder if that could be related?

Today’s main workout (as a quick sidebar, I was reminded again today that for a lot of people running for 3 miles with a kilometer of drills in the middle would be their main workout) was one I hadn’t done before. The goal was to run 600M at your goal 10K pace, then jog 200M recovery, then another 400M at the same pace; we were to do 3-5 sets with 2 minutes active rest between each set. My regular pod was pretty much absent, so I got ready to run with Tony and David. We decided on a 1:45 target for the 400s (7:02 pace) and then I screwed up the math and thought that a 2:42 would be the correct 600M time - we should have been aiming for about a 2:38. Sorry, guys.

Between me not having a watch and none of our other regular pacers being around, it took a couple of laps for us to settle down properly. Our first 600M pass was a little fast (actually almost perfect for the real 2:38 goal) and we slowed down too much on the 400M to “compensate.” Starting with the second set we had our pacing down much more accurately and just started speeding up from there.

The third set was my personal favorite. I was leading on the inside lane, and I felt so great when I was running. It was a solid effort, but still a long way from a race, and I really felt I was doing everything correctly. David was calling out our times, and we were faster than goal by a fair amount, but we kept the pressure on and just sailed around the track. The best way I can describe those laps would be smooth.

I’d worked out that my fourth set would have to be my last, due to time constraints, so I kept the pressure on and knocked a second off the pace again for the 600M. On the last lap, I started out pretty fast for a change and tried to pick it up even more around the 200M point. By the last 100M I was working hard but still had my breathing completely under control, and I’m pretty sure I set a PR for the 400M distance! Even better, Larry had been watching me and said that my form was really good, with high knees and a good arm swing, just what I like to hear at the end of a solid workout.

Notice that if you ignore the first 600M, each successive run was faster than the one before it. Now, normally I go for consistency on these, but I think today was a pretty damn good workout just the way it was. I’m feeling really good about my training this year.

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