Circuits Again

After a long weekend visit to Mississippi, I was ready to get back to Gazelles this morning. Some of my peeps told me I looked sleepy, but I really felt pretty good. It was extremely humid today, and we'd all be drenched by the time we were done with the workout. I was a little worried because I did absolutely no running in Mississippi, but I'll just call that a vacation of sorts to recharge the running batteries.

I saw Patrick and Jan right away when I arrived, and then most of the regular crew showed up after that. Frank is in New York/Vermont, and Alex met us over at AHS for the workout. I ran over at a nice easy pace with the gang, and then drills were drilled. The workout today was to do 3 sets of 800m circuits, using the quad squats against the fence instead of the plyometric jumps. I took Gilbert's advice again, and ran the 800's quite easy, but very consistent. The circuits aren't all that bad, but when you start running after doing the lunges, your legs always feel like rubber. My 800's were 4:16, 4:19, 4:11, an average pace of 8:33/mile. That's faster than 60% effort, but still quite reasonable. I did the first 800 with David, and then the last two with Shannon and a few others. It's nice to have a little pack to run with on the track. Alex was there, and he looked like he was having fun. Hopefully, he's almost ready to rejoin the herd?

Afterwards, we did the same low hurdle jumps from last time, and although I still feel very earthbound doing them, it was pretty fun to finish things off that way. I ran back to RunTex with Amy, and we accidentally ran harder than I had planned, but that's okay, I guess. A solid stretching session followed that, with Patrick and Jan, among others.

A little joking around with Gilbert, and I was headed home. For the day, a modest 5.2 miles. The plan for the rest of the week is a nice easy 30-45 minutes tomorrow in the 'Hood, then Thursday is 400's with the Gazelles. I'll probably do a little less of those than normal, since I've got a 5K race in Charlotte on Saturday. After that, it's trail running for a week while I'm at guitar camp in Asheville, NC. I'm already looking forward to it!