Addicted to Exercise

This morning we had the 1000 meter intervals at AHS. I was a bit disappointed with this one. Not only did I get moved back a group, but I was holding back expecting to do eight. Then Gilbert stopped me after six, so I didn’t even have a chance to do a fast finishing lap. My times were: 3:47, 3:43, 3:44, 3:43, 3:41, 3:41. Those are solid times, but I was planning to do a couple more like that. In theory, stopping early should give me more energy for the long run this weekend. Hopefully that will be the case.

This morning we had 1200 meter intervals on the schedule. This isn’t a common workout, and during the warm-up I was trying to figure out if they were more like miles or more like 800s. I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’m going to run them anyway. I felt good on the warm-up, and I was nice and relaxed. When we arrived at the track, we found out there was a camera crew there doing a short piece on Gilbert. They really made a point of making sure no one had any problems with being filmed.

Gilbert wanted us to hurry up and get started so we would not have to cut the workout short. As I suspected, my task was to run five intervals. That didn’t sound too tough, but I was several steps behind my group on the first one. Fortunately, they came back to me after that. I was fairly consistent the whole time, and then Gilbert had us pick up the pace on the last lap. I was the last one in on that one, but I had a pretty good pick-up from what I had been doing, so I was satisfied. My times were: 4:25, 4:24, 4:23, 4:26, 4:13. From there, we did a couple 200s to loosen things up, and then it was time to run back. I still felt good on the way back, and I just did a couple stretches before I took off.

This morning we had 400s on the schedule. This one is pretty fun for me. It seems like no matter how fast I’m going I can always throw out another lap and rest another minute. I felt relaxed on the warm-up, and by the time we got through the drills and strides I was ready to go. I’ve been concentrating on my running form and turnover lately, and I felt like my strides were working well for me. I lined up with my group, feeling confident, and we were off. We took the first couple laps to get into a groove, and then things were pretty steady. I’ve been moving up in the groups, so with this group I generally am near the back where in the past I was always at the front of my old group. My times were: 85, 83, 81, 82, 83, 82, 82, 81, 83, 80, 84, 83, 83, 83, 82, 77. Those are pretty solid. That’s definitely not my most consistent set, but it’s all right. I felt pretty smooth, and Gilbert even said my alignment was not too bad for a change. I felt a little sluggish on my cool-down run back to RunTex, but according to the watch that was just my imagination. I did a little stretching, and that was that.

This morning was my first interval workout in more than a month, and I think it went pretty well. My legs are feeling really good, so I enjoyed the warm-up and the drills, and then we divided into groups for the workout. I know I can run these laps faster than I did, but I felt like this was a good effort for my first workout like this in a while. I had: 4:02, 3:50, 3:47, 3:47, 3:53, 4:06, 3:46. I kind of fell apart there for a couple laps, but I pulled it together and finished strong. Gilbert said my form is still off (legs crossing), so I really tried to work on that the last couple laps. I did the cool-down run back plus some stretching, and I left feeling pretty good.