~8 miles @ ~9.7 min/mi

Urban roosters crow the dawn. Two children wrapped in blankets follow their mother across the street, to finish their sleep at a caregiver's home as their parents go to work. Today is the flight back from my Austin visit, so at 0630 it's time to trot to the local high school, with a long pause at the traffic light to cross Manor Rd on the way. I've got the track all to myself. It's too dark to read a watch for the first few steps up the speedwork ladder, so the GPS trackfile records splits of the 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 lap pattern in lane #2: 1:57 ⇒ 4:00 ⇒ 6:03 ⇒ 7:51 ⇒ 5:52 ⇒ 3:49 ⇒ 1:45 with ~2:15 recovery walks for half a lap between each. Texas temps are already in the 60s. A cool puff of air catches me by pleasant surprise in the middle of the ladder. A few minutes later a low fog rises with the sun over the grassy ballfields. The GPS thinks the distance around the track is 0.26-0.28 miles so it shows my pace as a trifle faster than the lap times would indicate. Maybe it's a quarter-mile track and not a 400m one?

(cf. 2006-07-15 - Final Texas Heatwork, 2009-08-10 - Beep, Beep, Beep, ..., 2010-07-15 - LBJ Ladder, 2010-09-21 - LBJ High School Track, ...) - ^z - 2012-01-31