Circuit Workout

This morning was really a nasty one. I think the term "blustery" serves to describe it pretty well. A pretty small crowd gathered at RunTex to meet Gilbert for our assignment. It was raining lightly, about 42 degrees, and breezy with a wind from the west. We all had on raingear and hats, and most of us wore tights just because of the weather. Anyway, we warmed up over to Austin High School, at a relaxed pace, and it took much of that run to let my legs get loosened up. We laughed a lot about how crazy we must be to be out there for a workout in this weather.

After the usual drills, Gilbert told us all to do the circuit training, 3-5 circuits with 800m easy running between each circuit. I paired up with Frank, and off we went. Our 800's were at about 9:00/mile pace, on average. We did 3 circuits (each circuit was step ups, pushups, situps, "Superman" jumps, and deep lunges), and called it a morning. It was just too nasty to stay out much longer.

On our cooldown run back to RunTex, it started to rain a bit harder. Alex caught up with us almost all the way back, after he did 4 circuits (or was it 5?). We got to our cars right as the weather really started to open up, and those dry clothes stashed in our cars really felt great. Sometimes it's the very simple things that bring joy... dry shirt, socks and shoes, and an old sweatshirt to warm up.

I chatted briefly with Gilbert after I got bundled up, and he was busy trying to find reasons not to run in the rain with his training buddies. I thought that was funny, and reassuring to see that even the really good runners sometimes just don't want to get out there in the weather. One of his training friends is Greg McMillan, whose McMillan running site has a really useful race pace calculator. Gilbert introduced us, and it was fun to put a face with the website. When they finally headed out into the wet and cold, I piled into the truck and drove back home.

It was one of those character building exercises, I guess, but I'm glad I got out there and did it. Total running day, 5.2 miles, average pace 9:27/mile. Tomorrow, it's supposed to dip into the low 30's, warming all the way to the mid to high 40's. Good running weather if the sun is out, and it looks like Decker will have near perfect weather conditions on Sunday!