who loves the sun?

Ah yes, a weak reference to a lame velvet underground song makes for great start to this post. Even though the menu for tuesday's workout wasn't so appealing (3000/2000/1000), the forecast for that day had me excited. There was an 80% of rain with temps only in the 80s.

Sure enough, at 4:30pm it was pouring down rain and I couldn't have been happier. But by the time I got to Runtex, it had stopped and there was a hint of blue sky on the horizon. That didn't seem promising. The sun coming out right after a downpour would really be the least desirable of outcomes. But sure enough, by the time we finished our drills at Zilker, the sun was shining brightly and you could see the steam rising off of the road. Any enthusiasm that might have been lingering for this workout pretty much disappeared that point.

My new goal was just to try to finish all the repeats: 1x3000m, 1x2000m, 3x1000m. I took it nice and easy on the 3000, and felt reasonably comfortable and finished strong. 12:32. The 2000 was a little faster but nothing to get too excited about: 8:02.

My legs were already tired, but I still wanted to at least make a decent effort on the 1000s. We all took our time walking/jogging across the soccer fields to the starting point and on the first one, the group I was with did the first half really really easy and turned it on as we rounded the corner and went into the second 500. Despite a decent effort to finish strong, my time was 4:02, which I wasn't overly enthused about. The next two were much better: 3:48, 3:45, which isn't too far off of my pace from the old days. That last one took pretty much everything I had though, and I'm not sure I could have shaved much time off no matter how motivated I was feeling.

The good gossip from the workout was that Gilbert guaranteed Mario that G's time in The Human Race (tm) would be 12 minutes faster M's. Alright, it's on! I figure that means Gilbert's going to have to come in around 30-31 minutes or so, which could be tough on a hilly course in the heat.

I missed the thursday track workout, so I decided to try to run a couple fast miles this morning. Unfortunately, I got a late start and only had time for 4.5 miles. The 3 miles I timed were 7:40, 6:50, 7:28. Not great, but not bad.

Later in the day, I had a little free time, so I ran 4 easy miles on the greenbelt. My first two-a-day ever!

Doing two runs with one on ttalbl and the other on the greenbelt provided a really easy comparison of those two locales, and not surprisingly I found ttalbl much more tedious. The variety on the trail just seems to help time pass a lot more quickly.

I'll miss saturday's long run, but hopefully I'll get to do my usual 10 on sunday morning. I'm optimistic once again that I can continue to improve and get back down under a 7:40 pace.