Despite what I said yesterday, I ended up parking down by RunTex and doing the warmup run to Austin High. There were two reasons for this - first, I was feeling pretty stiff and wanted the full 1.6 mile warmup (if I do it by myself on the track I’m more likely to do only 3 or 4 laps). Second, since I was forgetful when I left the house, I was going to be driving right past RunTex anyway. It worked out alright; I was almost late to my 8:00 client meeting but made it just in time anyway.

After the warmup and drills, we found out what our workout was going to be. Basically, we started at four laps (one mile), then a two minute rest, then three laps (1200M), two minute rest, two laps (800M), two minute rest, and finally four (or more) 400M intervals with only a one minute rest between each one. The official goal was to keep a constant pace, making the first mile pretty hard and backing down the distance as we got tired rather than slowing down.

There were only two people from my usual pod, including me, so Gilbert just tossed everyone at my speed or slower out on the track and told us to figure it out :) I had said that I was going for a constant 1:45 lap time (7:00 pace), but David pointed out that I took off way too fast. I backed it down, but was still heading for a 1:40. Still, I was feeling pretty good, and decided to just run comfortably hard and see what happened. The result was a track mile PR at 6:43 (close to my 6:38 downhill race mile PR) that would probably have been even faster if I’d been running with someone - not that it needed to be! Getting the extra few seconds shaved off made this much harder than my recent 6:57 pace 2K Zilker lap was, even with the better surface.

That 1:29 400M time is a PR for me as well, so the fact that it came at the end of a moderately hard workout is good to see. I was really working there at the end, trying to keep up with Ivi who is much faster than I am; I almost (but not quite) made it, too. I was absolutely sucking air by the time I was done.

My cooldown run was slow, just like I needed it. I ran with Rich and Becca and we talked about training plans, jobs, and other general inoffensive topics. Its good to have people with whom you can share random conversation after a hard workout who understand that your brain is not exactly working at 100%! I did a few minutes of stretching and then noticed that it was 7:30 and I was in danger of being late, so that was it for me for the day.

Tomorrow is another gym day, with no planned cardio; Saturday morning is my first 18 miler of the season. It sounds long, even though two weeks ago I did 16 without any problem. Coach did recently tell us that we were going to start picking it up for the last five miles of these longer runs, not the last three like we’d been doing. Combine that with the fact that its a bitch of a hilly run, and it should be a real challenge to execute well.

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