Solid workout today with Nan and the Running Republic of Boulder group.
After a 2.5 mile warm up we stretched, then did 4 up hill strides to get things moving. Then it was right into a solid hill workout consisting of: 5 x 2 min steady up/2 min steady down. I was right with or just ahead of Nan on these repeats (she's recovering from the weekend) and we were doing them just over 6 min/mile pace gaining about 70' of vertical over 1/3 mile for 2 min and 5 sec. Then holding close to 5:00 pace on the down hill for 1:55. We kept these pretty even at that pace for all 5 sets. We were running up Lehigh street just off table mesa. Then we moved over to Table mesa for a: 5 x 60 sec hard up/60 sec quick turnover down. I accidentally took the first one of these out extremely hard, more like a 30 second/200 meter interval pace, and after 60 seconds it cooked me. I couldn't run down nearly as fast as I had just run up. Oops! I backed off (not that I had the choice at that point) after that, and just tried to hang on to Dan, who was leading all the 2 min. intervals. After the last 60 second uphill interval, we ran down for 4/5 of a mile keeping the hard pace. My last mile which was .2 uphill and .8 down hill I did in 5:20. It felt pretty solid. It felt great to be back to running fast and hard for some good intervals. The weather was really nice. It was fun and motivating to be running with a big group. Everything felt pretty good with the legs/body. My left hamstring I can tell is still recovering a bit as its still tighter than my right, but I never had any pain running. Its coming along pretty nicely. Total: 12.5 Miles - 1:35:30 - 7:35 avg - 900' vertical | 