This is an occasionally recurring workout, and while some people have fits about it I’m actually coming to enjoy it. Am I weird or what?

We started out with a one mile warmup, down to the Pfluger footbridge and back. Actually that’s about 1.2 miles starting at RunTex, but who’s counting? For some reason we then broke into two factions for the drills, us on the trail and the faster guys warming up elsewhere. Odd, but probably a good idea from a congestion standpoint.

This time I didn’t think too much before running. I mean, if I had, I’d heardly have done a bike time trial yesterday, right? More to the point, I never felt like I was going out of control at the start. Either pacing is becoming more second-nature to me, or I’m just finding it easier to run fast. Or both.

We stayed in a pack for the first mile and a half or so. Mike was ahead, then our block was led by Frank and Sean (going for some serious negative splits) with Carrie, Jan, and a couple other people I couldn’t recognize in the dark right behind them; I was near the back. Once we started to drift I passed Jan, but the others pulled away from me and I was having a hard time staying up with them. In retrospect I certainly should have been able to hang up there, but for whatever reason just wasn’t feeling it today. By the turnaround point they were far enough ahead - 10 seconds or so - that chasing them was getting to be difficult and I felt like I was just running by myself.

Mile three was easier; I concentrated on form and just ran “smart” so to speak. I hadn’t seen Jay, who normally passes me around this point, so I figured that he and Jan were somewhere close behind me. This was probably good motivation. Halfway through the mile I felt someone right on my back; when they passed me at the three mile point I saw that it was Greta who was turning on a finishing kick I couldn’t quite keep up with. Shortly after that I pulled alongside another Gazelle I didn’t recognize in the dark, we ran together for a quarter mile or so and then she started pulling away as well. Sheesh!

Coming into the last third of a mile or so, on the trail by Auditorium shores, I tried to kick it up but wasn’t able to completely close the gap. Nobody was passing me, but I wasn’t passing anyone else either. I ended up crossing the line in 29:52 for a 7:28 final pace, and a semi-decent PR.

Looking at my splits, its obvious that something odd happened in mile two. After passing Jan I just didn’t seem to be interested in staying up with the rest of the pack, and backed off. I don’t know why, and I’m going to have to work on that. Having more people to run against might help, but who knows? Its less than I’m capable of, that’s all I know.

To put it in perspective, I did a little searching and grabbed the other three times I have for this course:

So - while I don’t think I ran as fast as I could have done today, its still an improvement (and my first time under 30 minutes for this course). I’ll try to keep my motivation up higher next time around and see if that doesn’t make all the difference.

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