Circuit training and African Jumping Jacks?

Back with the gang this morning, we gathered and then cruised over to Austin High School for circuit training and "new stuff." I ran with Margaret, Shannon, Jan and Amy over to the track, just enjoying the morning. My legs felt pretty good, but I guess I was a little stiff from yesterday's racing. Drills were drilled, and Gilbert could see very clearly this morning, and corrected my form on the Butt Kick drill. Okey dokey.

The workout was circuit training, between 4 and 10 circuits (ten?!), with just 400m intervals between sets of exercises. This time, for "advanced" people, the bench stepups were replaced by more athletic stepups where you change feet in midair on each repetition, accompanied by more arm swinging for balance. Once you got the hang of it, and got over the fear of missing the bench on your stepups, it was actually a better exercise. We all got totally filthy doing the situps and back raises on the track, but what the heck. One of these days, I'll be smart enough to wear a dark shirt instead of white for these workouts.

I took it truly easy on the 400's, per Gilbert's instruction, averaging just 8:55 mile pace (around 2:14 per 400), and did the minimum of 4 circuits, including 4 sets of exercises, before Gilbert called us over for the extra fun stuff. The exercises weren't that bad, again, but there was continuous huffing and puffing since we never really get a chance to catch our breath.

The extra stuff was a set of what I'll call African Jumping Jacks, where you kick your leg out, Rockettes style, and clap your hands beneath your leg, holding your leg nice and straight (if you can). Alternate your legs, and you've created a pretty silly looking group of sweaty runners dancing away. We did 15 per leg. Then, we did two sets of "Fast Feet," one minute each, and we were done.

The Governor was on the track as we left, plugging away at his own workout. No running bodyguards today, though. I joked with the big boys in the black Governor Surburban about why they were not out there with him, and they laughed and said that they had work to do later, and didn't want to get all tired. Funny. We all giggled (not the bodyguards, of course) amongst ourselves about the nearly overwhelming urge to greet the Guv with "Adios, Mofo" after his recent gaffe, but we successfully avoided that.

I ran back to RunTex with Amy, Shannon, Leslie and David, in a time nearly exactly like the warmup run. Good set of stretching later, and we were done. Patrick and Jan stretched with me as we joked around a bit more with Gilbert.

It was a fun day of hard training work. For the day, 4.7 miles and 4 circuits of strength work. I'll be sore tomorrow, no doubt.