Intervals With Randy

An April run as recorded by my Forerunner

April 7th, 2009.  9 AM.  A beautiful sunny morning with temps in the mid 50's.  I had run into Randy at the high school parking lot the day before while picking up Matthew from baseball practice and made this running date before he got away.  

Started my 405 while jogging over to Randy's house and before heading down to the middle school track.  Randy wasn't quite ready to go so stretched a bit in his driveway.  After a few minutes we were off. 

Warmed up by jogging up thru Snyder park and then coming down Main street into old town Sherwood.  I was almost 2 miles into my run when we got to the middle school.  The PE classes were out on the football field practicing lacross.  There were lacross sticks, cardinal red T-shirts  and tennis balls going everywhere.  The teachers had pulled out one of those green AV carts, strung an extension cord and were blasting music over a stereo.  

Most of the kids saw what we were doing and gave us a wide berth.  Others were pretty clueless and wondered onto the track without looking.  But, it is their track and their time to use it, so...

Randy's plan for the day, which he had gotten from the Runnersworld website, was to do three sets of 800m and 600m intervals at 5k pace with 90 second recoveries.  Randy had decided that 5k pace meant  7 minute miles - which was cool with me.   

We took off on the first 800m (2 laps) and we're just friken flyin'.  But I'm following alongand  having a good time.  It's his workout and I'm just tagging along as far as I'm concerned.  We got done with the first 2 laps and Randy looks down at his watch and states the waayyyy obvious, "we ran that one a little too fast."  "Yeah,"  says I, "that did seem faster than 7 minutes.  We can slow it down for the next one".  Randy nods and I notice that his glasses are starting to fog up.

The next interval was 600 meters and this time the pace was still too fast, but a tad better.  The next 600 was too fast again, but I'm just enjoying myself with no expectations for anything but running on a beautiful morn.

Later my watch would show that we were doing about 6:30 pace.  My heart rate was doing fine at about 165.    

Slowing to a trot after the speed set I stopped and bumped fists with Randy.  "Whew, that was great.  Thanks man.  It was good to do some faster running out here."  Randy looks at me wryly, "we still have 2 more sets to do.  That was just the first."  

Uhhh, I knew that.

The next set of 800/600/600 was more realistic, bouncing around the 7 minute mark.  The last set was an average of 6'45" miles and we finished up the last 200 meters at 6'20" pace where my heart rate peaked at 182.  

I came to a complete stop after this one, got my hands on the hips, bent over at the waist, took a few gaspy breaths and then broke out the ol' fist bump for the second time.  "Ahhh that was good!"  We finished up the lap we were on at an easy jog and then started for home by cruising through Old Town and pointing our noses up Pine Street and the steep hill which loomed ahead.  I was out of gas and while I didn't walk up the hill it could barely be called running.  We rounded the corner onto Division and I bid adieu to Randy at the driveway up to Snyder park.  

In all I got in 8.5 miles, which was a surprise.  But it was a good run on a beautiful spring morning.