Friday, November 10, 2006

Summer Hoppin'

I finally got out last night to TH Park to Hop with the SMARTie's. Summer continues to rear it's ugly head but no matter. Sweat is a good thing. Lee and Chris (proud father) led us through the workout with much skill and ease. Well, light on the ease part.

I was able to arrive early and got a good 15-20 minutes of stretching in. That did me some good as my calves and hips have been feeling tight. I took off a little early on my warmup to time my return with the rest of the group. Standing still, there was a bit of a nice breeze but it mysteriously disappeared as soon as I started running. Still, I can't quite complain about the temps and humidity with July and August still fresh in my mind.

One complaint, though...the TUNES! I don't know if it was the sound track to Dirty Dancing or what but I almost fell asleep. NOT conducive to getting this former couch potato's feet moving. Still, I managed to get a little burn and am sure feeling it this morning.

Workout - SMARTie Hop with warmup and cooldown
Warmup - 1.52 miles (13:26 average pace)
the Hop (included .2 miles Greyhounds)
Cooldown - 2 miles (14:38 pace)
Total miles - 3.7 miles

The rest of the group did 4 miles cooldown at a pretty decent effort. Personally, I was spent after the Hop. My legs were almost mush. BUT, I felt a lot better than I did post-Hop back in mid-September. Here's a recollection on that cooldown from a previous blog entry:

"1.5 mile cooldown - 24:30 (~15:40 pace) - my legs and ankles were spent."

The workout tonight did expose a significant difference in stregth between my right and left leg/ankles. While my left leg feels really strong and stable, I still have a lot of instability in my right leg. I mentioned it to Steeeve and he said not to worry about it. He said balance and strength would come and I need to continue to concentrate on CV fitness and weight loss. Will do!!!

Great time last night. Thanks Striders. See you out there! Oh, by the way, great to Joe Carey out there at TH park. He ran by me and disappeared like a ghost.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the hop!

You certainly did a lot more than I did last night!

Go Vic!

Anonymous said...

The above comment was Steve @ RunSteve.Com!

L*I*S*A said...

Hmmm, what is this Hop thing all about? Sounds intriguing...

TX Runner Mom said...

The Hop sounds fun...much better workout than my whopping 25 minutes on the dreadmill.

Anonymous said...

The Hop is a Strider mishmash of neural and plyometric routines expounded by Dr. Owen Anderson. It's directed towards core strength and explosiveness.

Vic's graduated to just "one of the group" from September's "wanna try this?" experiment. Next Hop is Thanksgiving morning at a very civilized hour for those not wishing to do a Turkey Trot. And, good news, Vic has volunteered to bring the music!

Steeeve

Let's all do The Hop (oh baby)
Let's all do The Hop (oh baby)
aaaaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaaaaah
Let's all do The Hop

Anonymous said...

Ah. I'm glad you wrote that in the comments describing what it was. I never realized that. I think you could write a couple of posts - at least - about that!