You know the drill by now. We meet at RunTex and run to Austin High - today was an 8:34 average pace with a slight negative split. I was able to keep to 4/4 breathing for the first mile again, which is a good sign. There was a great cool breeze floating off the lake while we were on the South side, but it died down once we crossed over and the humidity (90% according to weather.com) really hit home once we moved across the road to the track. Ah, well. We did our drills, then went into a pretty basic circuit workout this time:

800m easy
10 bench steps (each leg)
10 russian crunches
10 pushups
10 standing vertical jumps
10 lunges (each leg)
Repeat with no recovery

This was the first time that I did four circuits - before I’d only been doing three. The first 800m was a comfortable 3:55 (7:53 pace) but the second and third were progressively slower, at 4:12 (8:07) and 4:24 (8:51) respectively. That time was slower than I wanted to see, so the fourth one came in at 4:14 (8:31) which is more appropriate for this workout.

I was doing fine after the first circuit, but after my second set of lunges my pulse was definately up there. The third set of exercises felt a lot more difficult to do properly, but by the time I hit my fourth lap I knew that I was almost done, so that made them easier to handle. I’m getting better at the bench steps, which is due in part to practice at these circuits and in part to the multi-hip machine at the gym I’m sure.

After some cooldown I ran back to the cars at a nice, easy 10:10 pace and talked the whole way. Felt pretty good about it too. Stretched, chatted, and that was it.

Total distance: 6.3 miles

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