Recovery Run and Stretch-A-Thon

Last night, we had a monster storm come through, throwing golf-ball sized hail down at us in a very intense 30 minutes of big 60 mph wind, rain and lightning. It was a party, that's for sure. This morning, I noticed a fence had been totally shoved over by the wind in our neighborhood, and all the trees had a bunch of leaves and branches blown out of them. The fury of Nature.

Today, I eased down to Town Lake at 7:45 am for a nice and relaxed 30-40 minutes of recovery running. I was in pretty good shape as I rolled out of the car, just slightly stiff in the legs. The first mile was really easy, just letting my legs get loose, and then for the rest of the run, I ran purely by feel, without the HR monitor, enjoying the morning. I went about 3.25 miles, average pace 9:10/mile, and it felt really comfortable. The rest of the Gazelles had finished their longer runs when I arrived, and we did our striders (I did 4) as a loose group. Gilbert returned by then from his 18 mile jaunt, and led us in his balance drills and hops. I did those pretty well, and I don't even feel clumsy anymore when we do those.

The stretching session was fun, as usual, with lots of groaning on hamstring stretches in particular. There were some newer folks there today, and I heard one guy say that he had never stretched that much in his life. I guess so, but it's just the usual routine for the rest of us. My hamstrings were pretty tight, though, and Gilbert did some extra stretching torture with me after everyone had finished. I stayed behind, too, with Jan and Patrick, and did our post-run exercises together. I did 4x30 crunches/extensions, 2x15 pushups (stronger every day!), and 2x25 back raises. Gilbert showed us an evil ab exercise using the medicine ball, but I'll have to get stronger before I can try that one, I think.

It was a fun and relaxing day at the running office, one of those that you can really enjoy without thinking so much about how hard the workout is. Now, when can I get to the gym?