It's A Beautiful Day

What a nice surprise this morning to find temperatures in the mid- to high 60's! The humidity is even quite a bit lower than usual, so all in all, it was about as nice as it gets here in the summer. Emily, Frank, Brian and Shannon (with Teek) joined me for the Tuesday recovery thang, and we had a grand time. The running felt even easier than usual, which was later confirmed by the HR data. Our pace was the same as previous weeks, but the weather made it easier on all of us. Now THIS was a recovery run! Coming across the I-35 bridge, we saw Jan and Brad ahead of us on the trail, but we never caught them this morning. Too bad. We made a couple of very quick water stops along the way and had the usual gabfest as we ran along.

Once we got back to Auditorium Shores, I persuaded them to join me for some striders to finish off the exercise day. Those were no trouble at all, so I guess we did it right today. Full stretching afterwards, some conversation with Alex, and I was done. The only side effects from yesterday's hopping and bounding were significant soreness and stiffness between the shoulder blades. Felt like I'd been in a car wreck. Gilbert told us that's from the strong arm assists that we used during some of the more energetic jumps and hops.

Stats: 7 miles, 1:05:51, 9:25/mile pace, including all stop time. Only about 2 minutes of water stops, so it wouldn't be crazily different if I calculated actual running pace.

I went home to get Ranger so that I could take him to the kennel for his summer shave. I think he's already feeling a little embarrassed about it. After that, and a quick breakfast snack, it was time to hit the gym.

GymTime

Core and leg weights today. I managed to do the Roman Chair stuff today, bumped up my reps on the floor crunches to 30 each set, and did my planks. Then, on leg weights, I was pretty aggressive. First sets on quad extensions and hamstring prone curls were 15 reps @ 40 lbs, then second sets on both at 50 lbs (I got 15 on quads and just 10 on hamstrings). Both types of calf raises were still the same, at 70 lbs. On leg press, I did a first set of 12 reps @ 140 lbs, my usual weight, and then did a second set of 12 @ 160 lbs. I wasn't expecting that second set to be that easy. Oh, well, that's what you find out doing this stuff. The rest of the summer, I'll occasionally do sets of bigger weight and lower reps as an experiment to see how much strength I can build.

Gold's was playing exceptionally bad music today, so once again, I was very glad to have the iPod. Now, I wonder how the mile repeats are going to feel tomorrow?