Back at the Track

I didn't feel as bad as I thought I would after consuming 3 Stoli Vanilla Cosmopolitans last night and 1/2 piece of cheesecake! Damn, they tasted good. Maybe there's something to this vodka thing. It wasn't as punishing as 3 glasses of wine would've been. Of course, it helps that I was also hydrating like crazy yesterday as well.

So, I was up and at Runtex by 6am. I'm officially back with Gilbert after an extended break from speed training. I hadn't planned on doing any major speed workouts this week, but I had committed to meeting Amy there. Plus, I could always "run at my own pace" (which is Gilbert's way of saying run as fast as you can). He actually said that if we were doing the triathlon this weekend, we should only do 10 x 400s instead of the prescribed 12. Yay...I can do this!

It felt weird lining up with a group of runners again. Seriously, from February to April, it was pretty much just me and Scud (Amy's nickname because of her unpronouncable last name) pacing every run together. While everyone else was tapering or recovering from the Austin Marathon, we were ramping up mileage and workouts virtually by ourselves. I was happy to be back, but nervous about lining up with Frank, Marcie, Shannon and Brian. I haven't run much with Shannon and Brian, but I know that Frank and Marcie can haul ass. They are definitely faster than me on speed workouts. Coach G told us to run each 400 (one time around the track) between 1:30 and 1:35--I think. I was still slightly confused as to which group I should fall in. I was ready to line up with Jay's group when Shannon made my day. "I've read your blog. You need to be in this group." Damn--I was busted.

The repeats were just slightly uncomfortable. It's easy for me to say that now since I'm finished and only had to do 10. I'd say they were somewhere between an 85-90% effort depending on the lap. It was ok for one lap, but it would've been very difficult to hold that pace for 800s. We could speak while we were running, but we were all breathing hard. We even found the energy to joke about an unfortunate frog that lay partly squished on the track. He was no doubt a victim of some athlete's running shoe. Sweet.

Here were our splits. We took a 1 min recovery in between each:
1:40
1:34
1:30
1:31
1:32
1:33
1:32
1:31
1:31
1:33

With the 1.62 mile warmup and cool down (3.2 miles), I had a decent workout and my legs felt great!! woo hoo...

I have swim class tonight and then Shawn and I are heading d-town for some live music. We've vowed to get out more and enjoy the town!

Nutrition:
5:15am 1/2 w.w. tortilla with PBJ
9:20am cup of kashi with Blueberry yogurt
1:15pm 1/2 piece of cornbread, Large Mixed Greens salad with smoked salmon and shrimp cakes (outrageously good) and side order of mashed sweet potatoes, diet coke
4pm 1/2 cookie
5:00 pm chicken caesar wrap before 7:15pm Swim Class