Man alive, was last night's track workout a toughie! All this talk about slowing down, when I had a speedwork session with the regular /R/iver /R/unners crew the same day, ha! The weather couldn't have been nicer, considering I was anticipating 70-80*F for the high of the day (hey...it's like Spring in Texas!). It turned out to be more around 55*F. Happy temps. Harry had told me about the workout, and I shrugged and thought "Okee dokee...I can handle that." I shouldn't have been so nonchalant about it.
Fearless Leader Greg had posted: 7 sets of 5 minute *HARD PACE* intervals, with 2 minutes of recovery between each interval. Harry and I got to the track right on time and opted for a quick 400 to warm up. After a small amount of chatter, everyone was ready to go.
This was the last time Stephanie and I saw the fellas. They took off!
Steph and I pranced along for our first couple of five-minute "fast" intervals. We chatted about this and that, and at one point mentioned that the "hard" pace was perfectly comfy. We were only fooling ourselves. By the fourth set, we were quiet as could be. We were now moving into the stages and paces of discomfort.
We had planned on increasing our paces by about :15 seconds per interval, starting from an 8:30 pace. It didn't exactly happen that way, but we were happy with just feeling an increase in effort for every interval. We enjoyed the hell out of our two-minute recovery jogs. I got a horrible side-stitch at the end of the 5th fast interval, so we jogged it out for a moment, then I succumbed to the stupid thing and made Steph walk with me for a minute. We picked our pace back up after a minute and moved into the next fast interval. That was the last I saw of the stitch, thank gooses.
We rocked out the last couple of intervals like total.frickin'.champs. I had *THAT* moment when you feel like you're going to barf in the last 200m, when Steph and I picked up the pace to nearly a sprint to finish.
26 push-ups: Donesies. Thanks to Andy for taking the picture! He didn't run this evening with us, but met up with us anyway. That's the spirit!
We stretched out, talked a bit about the half marathon that three of us had run the previous weekend, and how a couple of our guys are running a 10K this weekend. We also talked about how most of us were really feeling the effects of the speedwork over the last five weeks. Newsflash: I'm diggin' it.
Prost! We hit up the Revolution Brewing tap room after track. We were going to order food from a local joint, but it was already late, so we skipped dinner. Oops. Liquid calories for me.
We got to hear a bit about James' Big Sur Marathon experience, as well as see some of his fantastic race photos! It looks like such a gorgeous way to travel 26.2 miles on your feet!
I mentioned a while back how anxious I was about group runs, or even running with a buddy. Stephanie and I were talking about how we both got kind of lucky, how our paces seem to be so very spot-on. We push each other just the right amount on the track, and that's a wonderful thing to me. The urge to quit or slow down is completely smothered by the fact that I feel like I need to keep up with the girl. I feel blessed to have that kind of reliability, and I'm determined that she's my sole mate. D'awww. <3
We adore this place and their brews. Their BrewPub is an absolute must, as well. We were all pretty beat (and RUNGRY!), so we hit the bricks once the tap room closed. Until next week, speedwork!
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Do you have a "sole mate", in running, cycling, Yoga, etc.?
Tell me about a local brewery you love!
Do you regularly do core work?
-I'm going from zero to twice a week with the workout provided in that article, plus some moves of my own! ;)
Ugh this all looks like so much fun! I wish I didn't still feel so paranoid about my body and injuring it, so that I could join a run club or something like that. It is freakin annoying. I definitely do corework regularly--I get it in yoga but I also try to incorporate it into my strength training as a part of my PT exercises.
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