Happy New Year 2007

It was a wonderful start to the new year this morning, as we gathered late (9:00am!) for a fun circuit playtime with Gilbert. There weren't many of us out there, but we were all pretty amused at ourselves anyway. Most of my normal pace crew were taking the sensible route, and were either travelling or sleeping in today. Still, there were plenty of folks to chat with as we warmed up over to AHS. Braz brought his two boys with him, and I estimate they were 8 and 7 years old. We were bemused to find that their running form is perfect as we hit the trail. Kids have great running form, and then somewhere along the way, we lose that effortless form and have to relearn the simple art of running. Sigh...

Drills drilled, we awaited the word from G. He called for 3 x 800m circuits for those of us doing the 20 miler on Sunday, and he wanted a little peppier running pace than usual on the circuits. I did my 3 circuits at 3:35, 3:41, and 3:43, for an average mile pace of 7:22. Snappy enough, with all the exercises in between.

After that, it was time for all the extra fun stuff. Did I mention how beautiful it was out there today? Bright clear sunshine, low 40's by this time in the workout. Made you feel good to be alive out there. Anyway, the extra stuff included a lot of things, because with the holiday, we had no time constraints. We started with hopping, two-legged and one-legged. Gilbert even made us do the one-legged version one person at a time, so he could check out our form. Talk about pressure! After that, we did the 15/30/45/90 degree leg lift series, the leg over/under/around series with a partner, the arch/squeeze series, and even a new deal, the glute squeeze exercise. We got the giggles on that one. There was also a new sneaky exercise to get the tibialis anterior muscle (the shins), which was deceptively difficult as the burn set it. We finished off the morning's extra stuff with 2 x 1:00 of fast feet, with chanting and singing.

Gilbert gave us some final words of encouragement to start off the New Year right, and it was the end of a fun day. Some of us ran back to RunTex the "long way," going back via the Mopac footbridge. We had some fun conversations about food running back, since by then, we were getting a bit peckish.

I stuck around for a bit of stretching in the nice warm sun with Emily and Monique, and we talked about training and race strategy for the 20 miler on Sunday. Then, I stopped by Einstein's for bagels to finish off this great morning.

For the first day of the new running year, I scored 6.35 miles. It was the first run in my newest pair of Mizuno Creations, my 17th pair of that shoe model. I'm rotating in the two new pairs of shoes that I purchased on Saturday, to ease them into full action while the existing Mizuno and Fila shoes hit their final miles in the next couple of weeks.