Circuits, rewired

Ah, yes. A June Monday, and more circuit training. I usually like these workouts, and today was no exception. We met early for the longer warmup (2.72 miles, 25:02, 9:12 pace), and were joined for that by Alex, who was cruising an easy 7 miler in his sparkling new shoes. Pete and Bernard were our coaches today, since Gilbert is off on another book tour engagement. Drills were uneventful, and it was time to play. Pete gave us the rundown, and sent us on our way. 800m runs between circuits for us, no stopping, no breaks. Once the first 800 was over, the group had spread all over the place, so getting the exercises done in an efficient fashion wasn't as tough as it could have been. The first time through, I had to alter the order of the exercises so I could keep moving, doing the bench stepups in the middle of the routine instead of first, but that's the only time it was an issue.

Pete had fun with his make-believe drill sergeant chatter, and truthfully, it made the workout a little more fun than normal. I finished the third 800m run, and was a couple of exercises into the third circuit, when Pete told us to finish up our current circuit and join him for fast feet. That's different that last week, when we had to stop where we were at the end of whatever time limit they had set. So, I was still huffing and puffing when we started the fast feet (2 x 1:00 on those), and was really gasping at the end of each set of those. Still breathing pretty hard, we did the standard plank core exercise, 2 x 1:00 on those, and then finished off the day with the leg lifts over and around a partner's legs. We were all pretty used up today after this circuit fantasia! My 800's were 4:01, 3:46, and 3:51, so I didn't do too bad on those.

After a cup or two of Powerade, Pete told the marathoners (and I guess I'm sort of tagging along with them) to do the long cooldown run, too. We walked down to the trail, and then kicked it into a jog for the return ride home. All was nice and relaxed for a mile in the 9:30 range, and then Jan, Frank and Brad got excited about a guy who was playing some sort of racing game with us on the trail. We'd all cruise past him, and he'd work really hard to pass us back, even though we were on a cooldown run. That's fine with me, but all of a sudden, I realized that our three lead Gazelles were picking it up quite a bit on the alleged cooldown run so we could catch him again. We passed him back about a mile and half into the cooldown, and sure enough, he passed us back a little while later. That last time, Jan and Brad were determined to show him who was boss, and roared ahead to run him down to the finish. They kept the hammer down even after he had given up. The rest of us weren't as excited about this, and cruised home. I think we all ended up passing the guy, but it sure wasn't a quest for me. It just sort of happened. The upshot of all this is that the cooldown run wasn't as easy as it's supposed to be. 2.68 miles from where we started running, 24:04, 8:59/mile pace. Oh, well...

For the day, 7.4 running miles, so this was a good mileage day for a circuit workout. The new Garmin tracked perfectly. I wore it today to get solid mileage numbers for the long warmup/cooldown, and as a bonus, I checked out how close it was on the 800's, just for fun. It gave me .53, .50, and .50 miles for the 800m laps, so that was really dead on. Very cool. The old Garmin would be all over the place for track workouts, on the occasions that I wore it to Austin High.