I remember when Sundays were rest days....

...Now it's the toughest double of the week. With racing season upon us, rather than Sunday long runs, Coach Dean is holding track workouts at 9 am. And he calls it his favorite workout - cruise intervals. The idea is to run 4-5 1-milers at 30-40 seconds slower than 5k pace, with only 1 minute rest in between. Primary goal is consistency - splits should be within 5 seconds of target. Dean really likes this one because it's a great tempo workout, but doesn't leave you feeling totally spent (which means no excuse to skip swim at noon :P) Anyways, I gotta say I really liked this workout. Felt like exactly what I needed after a tough ride yesterday. A really solid run, but no overexertion. Ran 4 1-milers at 6:25 with 2 miles warm up and 2 miles cool down for volume. 

With about 2 hours to kill before swim, something pretty exciting happened - I had my first trip to a Cal dining hall. Marc swiped Anna and me into the brand new Crawford Dining Center. Pretty gorgeous, reminded me a lot of MoJo. (Shoutout here to post-swim meals with Ryan Karr - gotta say, I really missed those croissant egg sandwhiches). It took a lot of discipline to not go back for seconds and thirds. This is the hardest part of doubles days for me - waiting to refuel (read: binge eat) until after the second workout. 

Swim was as brutal as I thought it was going to be. Another 3800 yd set (I swam that on Friday too), and this time with Coach Rob keeping us on the clock. And he bumped me up a lane. This was both encouraging and intimidating. I'd leave right on the feet of the guy in front of me, and by the end of our intervals I'd be a good 10-15 yds back. Catching 5 seconds of rest if I was lucky. They ended up doing a third broken 1000 interval set, but I grabbed my paddles and headed to an empty lane to pull at my own pace. Had a really long, hard week of workouts and wanted to make sure I didn't push myself too far.

Speaking of - I think this might be the most yards I've ever recorded in a week. 11,800 in all. I'll have to go back and check. Definitely seeing huge improvements in the pool. Will be interesting to see how that translates on race day.

My treat for the day (and I was thinking about it the whooooole time I was swimming): caramel bubble milk tea from PurpleCow. Mmmmm. Oh. And I have to give some love to Lady Liberty (my Jeep). It was pretty awesome to be able to just drive home after working out this afternoon. Big thanks to mom and dad for sending it out here!