down week....

(Monday, 20 October)
Whoa! Big day.

AM: I ran lower arroyo easy with the morning gang. I can't believe some of the team independently elected to run in the morning! What is coming of the world? I tried to take the pace nice and slow.

PM: I ran lower arroyo easy with the afternoon gang. I felt a little tired, but my time was actually faster than it was in the morning. Sweet double day!

(Tuesday, 21 October)
I decided that after yesterday, I should take it easy today. I did the warmup with the gang and some trotting around with the gals, and then took splits on their track workout. They did 4-6-8-12-8-6-4 with 1 to 1 rest. I love track workouts!

(Wednesday, 22 October)
It was really hot, so we did a slightly shorter version of tu madre. Afterwards, I did some running and plyos with the basketball team and some drills. Yay pylos! (I'm going to be soooore)

(Thursday, 23 October)
This was a much less structured workout than we have done recently. Per Stephanie's request, we did a classic fartlek with the whole team. We did it so that everyone led an interval (including Susan!) and the person leading can't be passed. We went in ascending age order, which was okay except that I think the first few intervals weren't long enough. My legs were feeling pretty bad! In the future, we'll mix up the order to make sure everyone picks hard enough ones.

I was particularly impressed with Qinren (our tennis transplant) who picked I think the longest interval (the inner loop at Lacy). We all ran in a pack at her pace (she's usually towards the back) and it went perfectly. I thought that showed guts.

(Friday, 24 October)
Lacy the long way. My legs are pretty tired today, and sore from the plyos the other night. I am a pathetic weakling.

(Saturday, 25 October)
We drove out to Prado to preview the course. Aside from having to hassle the park rangers to let us run in the park (people do stupid things when they think they might get sued) it was a good run. Fortunately, it wasn't too hot - the stench really picks up when it warms up out there. We noticed this a lot on our cooldown (yuck). We did roughly 1 mile intervals of the course (last bit = 800m) with 4-5 minutes of rest standing around in between. (That is, we broke up the course into about 1 mile chunks and ran those in order). We did it so that Susan and I started out 15 seconds ahead of everyone else, and then the top people had to pass me, and the back people had to pass Susan. It didn't work quite as well as I hoped. Maybe I should have only given myself 10 seconds.

Ian said that the following exchange happened:
(Susan runs by)
Oxy runner: "is she *pregnant*?" (note: Susan is now 7.5 months pregnant)
Ian: "Yep."
Oxy runner: "... she's not on the team, is she?"

Har har! Susan ROCKS!

(Sunday, 26 October)
Recovery from the Halloween party.