Circuits and a New Window

I was sporting my homemade cardboard and plastic (and duct tape) passenger window on the Tahoe as I made my way down to RunTex for the long warmup circuit workout today. It was raining pretty insistently as I drove, so I was happy that my cardboard engineering worked as well as I had hoped. It was quite strange not being able to see out of that side window, though. I never realized how much I use that side mirror until it was not available. :-)

Anyway, with the trail flooded in a bunch of places, we had to modify our long warmup route to Austin High School, going to the north side of the trail at Congress, but I felt really great doing so. Lately, I've been dragging a bit on the warmups, getting to the workout site towards the last of the pack, but today, that was not the case. The drainage canal near Austin High was totally full, so we had to do a long detour around that. Still, it came to 2.35 miles of warmup. Gilbert had us start doing circuits immediately, so we threw ourselves into the routine upon arrival. It was the usual circuit, with two additions. The first was that the guys had to do 6 pullups at the end of each circuit (I scored 4, 6, 5 and 4, which is better than the last time we tried these!). The second was that on each circuit starting with the second one, we were to do one round of medicine ball tosses. Those can start wearing on you a bit by the time you get to the later stages of each set.

After four circuits (400m runs between), Gilbert called us over to the Forum for extra stuff. Today, we just did the 15/30/45 deal and the Arch/Smash set, ending with 2 x 1:00 of "Fast Feet." I did much better on the core stuff today, so the gym work is starting to show its worth. That's very cool. Kudos to Alex and Anne for their stints singing the "Iyo Ngwe" song during Fast Feet! Woo-hoo-hooooooo!

I ran back with Alex, Frank, Vasil and Colleen, but Frank peeled off at Pfluger to do the longer cooldown run today.

I felt strong all day, and that's a relief after my unpleasantness after the 16 miler. No signs of residual dehydration, muscle cramping, or anything like that. Cool.

For the day, just over 5 miles. This week is intentionally lower in mileage to allow our bodies to recover and rebuild, so I'm looking forward to it. Next week will be a challenge while I'm on vacation at the beach, especially the 18 miler, but I hope to be up to that test.

I didn't get a chance to hang around afterwards, as I had to get up to the auto glass place for my 8:15 appointment to get a new passenger side window in the Tahoe. I made it with time to spare, and they were finished well within their estimates, so that was relatively painless. Now I can see again!