July 23

AM: 6 miles easy

PM: 1600 @ 2-mile pace, 1 mile jog, 2x4x400 w/ 200 jog, 5:00 jog rest between sets, 10 miles

I ran the Rock Creek Park trails in the morning, keeping the pace fairly easy.

After work, I met a solid group of GRC guys at the B-CC track for the workout: P. Murphy, Bain, Klim, Jarrin, and Geir. I wore spikes with a track 2-mile coming up next weekend.

The hard mile felt really relaxed. This reaffirms that the mile race a few weeks ago was an anomaly because I ran essentially the same time, negative splitting (2:22/2:20) for 4:42.

The 400s were also fast but relaxed. I ran even splits on just about all of them: :70, :70, :68, :68, :70 (with traffic), :67, :66, :63.

Jarrin deserves major props for this workout, which was his first mile ever under 6:00 (5:03?), and he was right there with us for the 400s, as was everyone else. He did this all in his trainers without insoles after he forgot his orthotics, essentially making him feel like he was running in cardboard boxes. Imagine what the guy could do in real shoes?

We ran a cooldown just before the sky opened up with torrential rain, thunder and lightning.

In other news, I need a haircut. I'm starting to look like I was cast as an extra in The Fifth Element.

Lastly, this video is posted on the GRC blog, but Peter put together more sweet race footage, this time for the Rockville Twilighter from last weekend. If you want to see my finish (grrr...getting outkicked...), go to 4:00 on the video. If you want to hear my edited (thank god), incoherent, dehydration-inhibited ramblings, go to 5:34.