Yesterday was my birthday, and as someone mentioned to me yesterday, "you're not getting older, you're aging up!". Although still a masters, I've now moved into the 45-49 age group. Of course most races don't have a 45-49 category but if they do, I'll be ready!
GCS had their weekly track workout last night. The attendance this year has been amazing (at least to me). They've always had a decent turnout but this year is different. It's almost crowded on the track and can feel like running through the mall at times. By now, most are aware of basic track etiquette so it's generally not a problem.
The large crowd is divided into 5 groups (I think) of differing abilities (group 1 is the fastest). For the past couple of weeks I've been running with group 2 but decided to see if I could hang with the big boys in group 1 this week. The workout would be 10 x 400m repeats with 200m rest. My plan was to run 85 sec laps.
Lap 1 - 80 sec, trailing the group by a few seconds, way too fast, I think I may die.
Lap 2 - 82 sec, see lap one
Ok, so maybe I'm not ready for group 1 yet. I gathered my pride and headed over to the pedestrian-like group 2. Just kidding! This group of unnamed fast masters (mostly) were running 88 sec and 90 sec laps when I joined up. They are actually a really good group to run with and most of the 10+ runners stay pretty tightly packed. I tried to convince them to run a little faster ( as I was hoping for 85 sec repeats) but they would have none of it and was almost kicked out of the group before I even started.
The splits below are from my watch. Our coach was yelling out slightly different (aka faster) times and some in the group panicked and made me run in lane 4 couple of times in order to slow me down a bit (slightly longer laps). Trust me, this group knows when it's running off pace and they're not afraid to let you know! In the end I tried to pace them as consistently as I could and made sure the group was sticking together as much as possible. With a 15k race on Saturday, it was probably a good thing I wasn't able to run 85 sec laps.
Remaining Splits:
Lap 3 - 88 sec
Lap 4 - 88 sec
Lap 5 - 88 sec
Lap 6 - 88 sec
Lap 7 - 89 sec
Lap 8 - 88 sec
Lap 9 - 88 sec
Lap 10 - 86 sec
After the workout Mike Wade gave me with a nice Elmo birthday hat (that said "I'm 45 Today") and the group sang Happy Birthday. Ahh, wasn't that nice? I even wore my hat on my cool down run.
