The good news was that I made it out to my training class today. The less good news was that it just wasn’t happening at 5:00 in the morning, so I slept in and went in the afternoon. That’s a Texas afternoon, you hear, which means somewhere in the mid-80s. Now, I realize that it won’t be long before that’s the low temperature, but after three weeks of glorious mid-50s in Europe, a Sunny 85 was quite hot enough for me!

The run over to Austin High was pleasant; I ended up running with Dick and we chatted about Germany, family, and the oddities of running at the hottest point of the day. I found out that he’s been doing it for twenty years! More power to him, say I, but I think the morning will be better for me in the future. I had some weak PowerAde, did our standard drills, and had another cup or so of weak PowerAde. I mean, yellow PowerAde is pretty nasty in general, but it only gets worse when its diluted. But I’ll say no more about that.

The schedule had us doing 1200 meter circuits, but we ended up being given 800s to do instead. Circuit training with the Gazelles, as some of you know, involves doing the run and then without resting doing a series of exercises - then right back into the next run again. Those exercises include step-ups, push-ups, modified crunches, back extensions, standing jumps, and lunges - its a great workout even without the heat.

Part of the key to a good circuit day is moderation in the running. I was still feeling pretty worn out anyway, and hot besides, so I intentionally started off slowly and clocked off a 3:48 time - not too shabby - then straight into the exercises. My goal is to do all of the runs at the same pace, but for whatever reason I was just not feeling it today; my next three sets took 4:12, 4:19 and 4:16 respectively, each followed by the circuit.

Once that was done we did the “fast feet” workout for one minute, then did two 50 meter sprints (holding our breath each time), another fast feet, and another two sprints. By the end of all that, I was ready to keel over; nevertheless it felt really good, even while I was doing it.

After that, people started heading back and I chatted with Gilbert for a few minutes. I told him that I was registered for NYC, and discussed the fall marathon training schedule briefly, and my goals. He said that with my performance in 3M, getting down to around 3:30 should be very achievable, even somewhere as crowded as New York. That felt pretty good!

Tomorrow I’m doing my 4-5 mile hilly recovery run with some of my fellow workers, and then on Thursday morning we have the 20×400M workout again! This time I’m going to drive directly to AHS, and I may even try to get five laps down before the class gets there so that I can finish and still clean up in time to make my 8:00 meeting.

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