Let's Cruise to Recovery

This morning, I met up with Frank, Anne and Amy for a nice and relaxed 7 miler around Town Lake. Although we're getting a little burned out on these routes, it makes for safe and comfortable running, and we had some fun out there. Anne likes going a little faster than our normal recovery pace, but it wasn't awful or anything. I ran with Amy for the first 3 miles or so, at which time she dropped back to shorten the run to 5 miles (she's triathlon-ing on Sunday, after all). From there, I scurried up to try and catch Frank and Anne. They had held up at the water stop at Lamar to see if we got past a sort of crazy guy running along the trail in his jeans a half mile or so before that. He was a little creepy, but short of muttering something to us as we went by, he didn't do anything in particular. The three of us finished off the run in solid fashion, with one last stop for cooler water at Mopac. We ended up with a lot of world and running problems solved (we covered a lot of conversational ground), and we even did 6 striders once we finished. I was stiff after the run, but the striders really helped me out.

It was 7 miles almost on the nose, 9:40 type pace with the two water stops included. A pretty relaxed 9:13/mile actual running pace. I really needed this run today, and it was nice to be able to have some friends join me to share the morning.

After we got finished, I hung out and stretched a little while I chatted with all sorts of Gazelles as they finished up their 1000's. It's been a while since I've talked with Margaret, and I think it's been over two weeks since I've chatted with Shannon. Good times. Finished off the morning by hanging out with Alex while the rain drizzled ever so briefly in the RunTex parking lot.

Tour de France Update

Once I got home, I saw the last hour or so of today's amazing stage of Le Tour. Floyd Landis rode like a man possessed, and somehow has overcome his classic bonk from yesterday to come back from 8 minutes down in the standings to third place, just 30 seconds from yellow. We might have the Maillot Jaune stay in America for another year after all!