Sunday?

I knew I hadn't blogged in a while but Sunday??? It's been since Sunday??? That's totally unacceptable.

Let me catch up Current events first.

I arrived at Terry Hershey 10 minutes late for the SMARTie workout. Guess it was really 20 minutes late since I usually start my warmup 10 minutes early. I stretched a bit and took off for an abbreviated warmup, arriving back just a few minutes into the SMARTie Hop workout. I owe some one leg squats and a couple sets of toyotas but jumped right in for the better part of the workout.

Every day seems to bring back more and more memories of last year's journey to my first marathon. I couldn't help but remember tonight as we were strolling over to start greyhounds how 11 months ago, Steeeve had invited me to "one of SMART's easier workouts," the SMARTie Hop. I remember how tough that workout was. I remember how the greyhounds were to that date the hardest training exercise I had ever done. I remember how my legs felt like jelly after we were done and how it was all I could muster just to walk a 1.5 mile cooldown.

Tonight was quite a different story. Don't get me wrong, the Hop is a tough workout and even now as I lay here in bed blogging, my legs still slightly resemble jelly but I did the workout, no problem. I felt strong doing runner's poses. I didn't fall off the bench doing high bench step-ups. The maniacs burned but were kind of fun. I still hate the wall shin raises!!! :) And the greyhounds really surprised me. I did 2 kind of scared! Like, I'd better save a little. Then the 3rd one was tough but I was fine. I remember a year ago at this point wanting to just quit and walk it in. Tonight, I was like LET 'ER RIP. I took off ahead of the entire group, accelerating to a smooth, kickin' all out sprint. Last year I would have worried about being in everybody's way. WIDE LOAD!!! Tonight, I stayed pretty much with the group. It was a great confidence boost for me.

Post-cooldown, a decent sized entourage gathered at Charcoal Chicken for some scrumptious fixins and some timely trash talking. It was a blast, as always when the Striders get together.

The details are fading fast from my memory but Wednesday found me running trails with the Striders. I took it very, very easy as my foot has been hurting lately. It felt really good after the run so I think my easy run was just what the doctor ordered.

Tuesday...now what did I do Tuesday? Oh, yeah! Kenyan relays. Oh, no, I'd like to forget that. What a tough thing!!! But fun and novel as the SMART program is keepin' it fresh for all of us. Pamela was a great relay partner and we kept each other moving at a pretty consistent effort for the whole 20 minutes. Steeeve asked me tonight if I lasted the entire 20 minutes. I thought, "You mean I could have cut it short? I didn't know that was an option." :) The thing about the relays is you pretty much gotta keep going or basically your partner is done too. So, that's what I did. But it was a long 20 minutes and the second 10 minutes was definitely longer that the first 10. Fun! Fun! Fun!