It was another humid day in Austin as we gathered at RunTex for our Thursday workout: a four mile tempo run. I’m in a bit of a hurry, so forgive me and I’ll just summarize this one: On the way out to MoPac I started out with a 7:45 - it felt comfortable and was pretty close to what I should have been doing. Mile two was slower at 7:58, during which time Jay caught up to me; I think I pulled back somewhat without someone to chase. Mile three, however, took a very entertaining 7:12 and felt hard, but not outrageous. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to keep it up and finished out with a 7:44 final mile, watching Jay finish the distance out around 30 seconds ahead of me.

Even with that disappointing finish, my total time of 30:41 (7:38 pace) was a 1:17 PR for this run, so I can’t complain too much. Maybe one day I can even manage to beat that in a shorter 5K race when its not all humid and nasty… Actually, while I was pushing moderately well, I never went "all out", so I should have some more in me than that. Theoretically. I still need to get that time down to about 29 minutes if I want to hit my NYC goals, but that doesn’t feel too unreachable, especially since I have four months in which to do it.

In the evening I went back to talk to Gilbert on my way home from work, and we discussed a couple of issues that I’d been having. He says that my main weakness on the hills is caused from a lack of core strength, and that I need to be doing a few hundred crunches every day to make up for that. Also, he reiterated that I’m still slapping the ground too hard, and said that while I’m not running slouched any more I am running too upright. There’s always something to work on!

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