So this morning the lows were up around 50, and I wore a short sleeved shirt; not only did I not regret it, I wasn’t the only one! Spring is here at last. Or at least until the trees bud out and we get a “surprise” February freeze that kills all of the new growth. Ah, Tejas.

Anyway, with the upcoming 20 mile race on Sunday we took it relatively easy. The plan was to do the seven mile loop with the first two slow, then 15 fartleks (one minute fast, one slow), then cooldown. Simple enough. We got going and still had a good 12 people together when it was time for the first set.

“Roll it!” Jay was the official timer today, and got us moving Westbound from I-35 as soon as everyone was on the gravel trail. He set a good pace, what would turn out to be one of the slowest of the day. Everyone (well, except for Frank who was feeling under the weather) got to lead at least one burst today - this meant that we had a wide variety of speeds going. Even though I wasn’t feeling great, I still headed out strong when it came to my turn, prompting a little, “Its not a sprint,” comment from the peanut gallery until I backed it down after a few seconds.

The first 8 or so were really fun. Even the people who weren’t sure about leading did well - Emily downplayed her running and then strung us out at a fast and furious pace, for example. By the 10th interval I was feeling kinda tired. I know that my form was suffering too - I’m working strongly to undo the crap that’s creeped in over the last couple of months. My foot was feeling a touch warm, but never became painful. During the last 5 my heart rate started climbing, and taking longer to recover than we were giving it. I hit around 192 today, which is a good sign that I’m still not fully recovered from something - might have been residual dehydration and sleep loss from this weekend, who knows. Either way, with my “recovery” periods letting it drop to 179, I was working too hard today.

We jogged the last 1.5 miles or so back to RunTex, then Gilbert made us turn around and do an extra mile of recovery. Then he gave us a hard time about being late back! Still, it was probably a good thing for me at least. We followed that up with four strides, then some footwork drills before I had to head out.

I screwed up my timing, but I was able to get the results from Jay’s blog. Our warmup miles were 10:30 and 9:20. For the fast sections, we were averaging around a 9:00-9:30 “slow” pace, with overall mile times coming in at 8:07, 8:20, 7:43, and 7:35 for the last 2/3 mile. Either way you do the math, that’s some fast fartleking! Our cooldown started at 9:02 and then our second cooldown was a 9:38.

Because I’m a geek, I couldn’t resist doing some maths. Assuming that our “slow” intervals started at a 9:30 pace and progressed evenly until our last “slow” was about 9:00 (realistic, I feel), and using the overall time-per-mile measurements above, it looks like our fast intervals averaged 7:07 during the first mile, 7:35 for the second, 6:42 for the third, and a blistering 6:26 for the last. Those seem speedy, but not unrealistic considering that we were only doing 160-180M at a time, even if they were a little hilly and rough (and dark). They’re a little off due to some uneven mile crossovers, but I think you get the idea.

I did have the opportunity today to notice one beautiful sight, and one wonderful sound. When we were at around the two mile trail marker, about 13 intervals into our set, we came across an opening and could see downtown across the lake. The sky was just beginning to lighten up but didn’t have much color in it, and the building lights were brilliant. Later on, during our last stride, I realized that we had a pack of 6 people or so running really quickly almost silently. That was a great rush - it means that we really are working on our forms to good effect.

Here’s hoping that your running went well today. I should be in the gym right now but, well, the Rose Bowl’s going to start in 30 minutes and I do live in Austin… you have to watch. I believe its part of the city code.

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