Back to Tuesday night track work

Tonight I was able to go back to running with the club on Tuesday night, doing track workouts. I showed up early so I was able to do a good warm up for myself. Walked the first lap before jogging the next two, walked another then jogged two more. I followed this up with some stretches to loosen up the legs even more before joining in with the club for the workout.

The first thing we did were strides. We ran four 100 meter intervals with about 30 seconds in between. The running was at about 5K pace - I was the slowest in the group as my leg still felt a little tight but it got better the more I ran on it. We followed it up with some more longer interval works. Being in the beginner group we did three 800 meters at approximately 2:05 pace with a slow jog in between. I followed during the first two sets of 800 but in the last one I was told to set the pace. Luckily the only other person in my group, other than Michelle the coach, was Brandy who was also a bit winded so my pace of almost 2:10 was more than fast enough.

By the way I enjoy running with Brandy, who during the three times I have ran with the club on Tuesday nights, has been very consistent with her pace of about 2:05 per lap. So staying with this club and running with her will be great for my building up my endurance. Despite missing out almost two weeks of running I was able to get back into it. After the last 800 we ran a few more laps of cool down, always running the opposite direction around the track as when we do the workouts. The warm up laps are also ran in a clockwise direction, workouts in counter clockwise. This helps balance whatever strain running in a track, since the track slopes from the outside lane to the inside ever so slightly.

Michelle mentioned that the club is doing a running and bowling thing - we get timed on how fast we run a mile and then we'll bowl as a group and whatever score we get, that gets subtracted from our mile time. I better start practicing my bowling. We have two chances to get timed in our mile, once during the regular Tuesday night workout on March 8 and then again during the Compete Green Mile on March 12. This event is part of the St. Patrick's Day festivities in Ventura, and goes along Main Street from Cemetery Park to Mission Park. Overall, I was glad with the workout this evening. I was slowed down a bit with my stupid ski injury but I should be back on course for the Old Agoura 10K on March 26.