No Need For Warmup

This morning, the old car thermometer read 77 degrees as I arrived at RunTex before 6:00 am. Not a good sign. But, we're slowly getting accustomed to the heat, so I guess it would be okay. It was pretty muggy, too, but that's nothing new here in Austin. A big group of runners was there to embark on a longish run, and Gilbert gave us the Scenic route as the course d'jour. He really wanted everyone to do Mt. Bonnell, but we weren't too keen on that. The fall marathon group will crank things up in a week or so, and I guess they were taking it relatively easy until they had to crank it up. Off we went, though.

My group was Rich, Brad, Jan, Shannon, Emily, Brian and Leslie. Frank, Liliana and Alex ran ahead at their elevated pace. Our crew cruised along pretty efficiently all day. Emily had some time issues, and cut the run a little short, leaving us at the boat docks. Once the rest of us got to the first water stop at the dry cleaners, Shannon, Brian and Rich decided that they wouldn't do Bonnell after all, so we'd be a gang all the way to the finish. We sort of took turns leading the way, so the pace varied to suit the person(s) in front. That was okay with everyone, I think. I took a GU at the dry cleaners, and after we had tanked up with water, we were off for the second half of the run. The hilly Scenic portion of the route was challenging as always, but we took it a little slower ( just slightly) than normal. Up 35th, and then down Exposition, we dealt with the remaining hills, and eased into the O. Henry Powerade stop in pretty good shape.

I had not intended to do any sort of "fast finish," but leaving O. Henry, I just hung out near the front of the pack and waited to see how I felt. We stayed pretty much together until Mopac, and at that point, Brian needed another quick drink of water. Rich stayed with him for a bit, but the rest of us went on. Just as we crossed the bridge, Rich came up behind us and blasted in front. Shannon quickly joined him, and they were off. I waited for a bit, but finally decided I could and should pick it up a little going home, and followed those two. The rest of the troops stuck to their pace, which was plenty quick, but I figured it was time to push it. Rich was long gone, but it seemed that I was slowly catching up to Shannon, so I was encouraged to keep going. Turns out, she had had a little too much fun last night, and was feeling the effects of that late in the run. That's about the only way I would be able to stay with her, that's for sure! Anyway, we ran together for a half mile or so, and finally I pulled away a little over the last half mile of the day, and finished up in pretty good fashion. My last couple of miles were 9:01, 8:25, and 8:00, so that was a decent fast finish.

Everyone else rolled in soon after that, so we all had pretty good days on a warm weather day. Brad's nifty new Garmin with the new and improved GPS capabilities gave us a mileage figure of 11.45 miles, so I'll take that. Mine read 11.6, but that was surely a little long. I scored a running time of 1:44:03, for a running pace of 9:05/mile. With the two fairly lengthy water stops, the full day's running pace devolved to 9:45/mile.

Most of us knocked out 4 striders on the trail, and called it a day. We were uniformly drenched upon completion of the day's exertions. Shades of things to come, I'd say.

Full stretching routine was entertaining, and then Jan, Brad, Alex and I ventured over to Deep Eddy for a nice cold water soak for our overheated running machines. That was awesomely good! I felt great once we finished 20 minutes in the chilly waters, and that ended a good running day.

For the week, I scored about 34 miles, so I'm almost up to my planned summer average mileage. I've still got some room to ease the recovery runs up to their usual 7 miles, and that will take me up to the 35-40 mile range. After a full week of completed workouts, including the gym, I feel pretty good. Tomorrow's full day off will be wonderful, though. I suppose I should at least do some core stuff at home tomorrow, but we'll see how that goes.