Addicted to Exercise

In what seems to be a tradition, the rain was falling heavily at the start of the Lamar and Barton Hills long run. There was a bit of a miscommunication because some of gathered on one side of the building while everyone else was out of sight on the other side. We took some shelter from the rain, and I guess we missed seeing the other group go by on the street. Eventually we got restless, and a couple of us ventured over and saw all the empty cars and knew what had happened. So, there were a bunch of us running behind the main groups. I knew I would catch a lot of the people before the run ended, so it was going to be fun.

I thought the first part going down Lamar toward the trail was pretty smooth. I ran with one of the other guys from the Monday group, and we made pretty good time. There was a water stop right before the trail, and by then the rain seemed to be stopping. Running on the waterlogged trail reminded me of last year doing this same run. We passed a big part of the main group before reaching MoPac, and from there the runners were much more spread out.

The Barton Hills section was a little slower, but we balanced that out with a trip up and down Wilke when we passed it. Then there was another water stop before the loop around. There were a bunch of people on their way back as we were heading out there. It was a little strange because they didn’t know we had started late. On the way back, we made a quick detour to hit Wilke one more time before heading down Barton Skyway back to Lamar.

I was pretty pleased with the run. My heart rate was in the right range, and my legs felt pretty good. The ran kept things cool, and unlike last time it didn’t pour at the end. With those couple extra items in there, I ended up with just over 12 miles for the day. After the stretching routine, a few of us took Jay out to brunch for his birthday, and that was a good time as well.

Gilbert’s workout calendar for today declared that he was raising the bar. We were doing Wilke, but instead of the usual maximum of 7 or 10, today it was 20. I hadn’t done one of these workouts in a few weeks, so I was not sure what to expect. I think this might have been the first time I’ve taken the short version of the warm-up for this one. I joined everyone else in parking at Robert E Lee instead of running from RunTex. When we arrived at the hill, we found out that we were extending it a bit. We usually just run the incline portion, but this time we started lower and ran to the end of the street to get a little bit of flat running on both ends of each lap.

I took off running, taking it a little bit easier because I wanted to give myself a shot at a new record. It can’t have been that slow though, because I still started to lap some folks after a while. The nice thing was that with the longer recovery I really felt ready to go again each time I got to the bottom. I saw Gilbert after 7 of them, and I asked him how many I should really do. At that time, he said 10, so I kept going. On what was to be my last one, I decided I really wanted to do one more (since 10 was my previous record), and as I passed Gilbert and told him that he said I should do two more. So, I kept going. As I was coming down after number 12, he egged me on again, and I did two more. By then, a lot of people were leaving (including Gilbert), so I figured it was time to switch to backwards and get ready to leave. I did three of those backwards things, and I didn’t even fall once. I fumbled my way through a couple sprints after that, but I could tell I was pretty tired and they weren’t very good.

I feel good now, though. I totally conquered that hill today. After my cool down run, I made a stop at the gym for an upper body workout plus a couple core exercises and a couple light leg exercises. I think that hit the spot, too, because my body felt good the whole rest of the day.

Clearly, I’ve earned an easy recovery day tomorrow!

I showed up at RunTex this morning with a big grin on my face since it was time for my favorite workout. I could see by the parking lot that a lot of people had arrived early and left already, but soon Gilbert showed up and convinced me I was there at the correct time. There weren’t too many people heading in the direction of Barton Hills, so I ran a little faster than I like to warm up just to keep up with the group that was there.

After the drills it was the usual routine, but the numbers were reduced in honor of it being taper time. I only had to do five up, two back, and two sprints. It really felt pretty good. I just love running up that hill. Even the backwards climbs were pretty nice. I’m not sure if that was from only having to do five forward or if I’m actually getting stronger. I had that nice feeling in my legs like I had just done weights at the gym. I didn’t stick around at the hill for very long and just went on back.

I arrived back at RunTex to find a few of the Monday/Wednesday folks hanging around after their recovery run, and I could tell they saw the grin on my face and knew where I had been!