Farewell Manual

We ran over to Manual HS today at lunch. I was going to do a track workout, maybe even 6X800. Some of the guys were doing a Makeup Bannister mile (Chipman and Jay) and some were going to do a Revenge Mile (Pete and Bob). I was even going to pace Pete for 800 of that.
When we got to the track after our 2 mile warm up there, we were stunned. The track was closed and a portion of it was bulldozed up. Where just 7 days ago we had the Bannister and all it's Glory, now there was destruction. Had it been last week they started, out Bannister Mile would have been ruined.

We stood at the fence looking down on the track, stunned, mouths open. I'm sure we looked like a bunch of kids at the pool after it has been closed for the summer. This is the 3rd downtown track that has been renovated on us and when they are finished, they close them off to the public. So Sad. We took off our hats and Craig said a few words in memory of Manual. We had some good workouts, some good Bannisters and some fun times there and some not so fun times. Jay, Bob and Pete were all disappointed. Chipman didn't make it out.

So we ran on to City Park discussing our options. Unfortunately I did not have my Garmin Watch to measure off an exact mile at city park for them. Instead we run the reverse golf course route. We picked up the pace and did a tempo run up 26th. Uphill into the wind until we reached Colorado, Bob got there first. Nobody had a split time and we don't know the distance, although short of a mile.

When we got to the Duck Pond, I did another tempo run to the end of the pond. Then on the way back we ran into Dan at Park Avenue and everyone except Craig took it up tempo to the Y. Bob was on my tail the whole way, but I pulled away on the steep downhill at the end. It was short of a mile also, I had 4:52 for that split

7 Miles 52 Minutes with about 2 Miles of Tempo