Workout with the black sheep--that's two weeks in a row, folks! I was a little late and ran my warmup (1200m) on the track with Bruce H while the rest of the group was on the road. Once the group arrived, we ran an 800 m of speed changes (easy on the curve, accelerate the straights) for additional warm up. The meat of the workout, courtesy of coach Josh Steffen, was 20 x 400m with 100 walk/jog recoveries. It sounds like a lot of running and it is -- especially for a runner on the mend. The goal pace was "somewhere between 5k and 10k pace." The first few were a little slow, between 84 and 88. After that, the pace settled down for the next 7 or 8 intervals to a pretty consistent pace of about 80-81 seconds. For the last 7 or 8 the pace dropped again, averaging about 78-79 seconds. The last two were faster, 76 and 72. Then a mile cooldown. I felt good overall--I kept the pace moderate and just tried to be consistent in term of the effort over each interval. This worked in the sense that I didn't die in the middle of any of the intervals. I had decent closing speed on the last interval which was encouraging. No problems with the hamstring or knee during the workout, but things are a little tight now. We'll see how it goes.
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