Ass-kicking run
This morning, I woke up to just over an inch of snow on the ground. I was not pleased. BUT, I had my coffee and oatmeal, and then headed over to the Fanno Creek trail to meet up with Junk Miles.
We set out in the cold, and although I knew we were running faster than my usual pace, I was pretty surprised when my Garmin notified me that we’d done the first mile in 9:35. That is wicked fast for me, lately.
Each mile was successively slower – when we finished, her Nike + said we’d done 5.3 miles in 10:40 averages, and I had 5 miles at 11:04 averages. Obviously, hers was more positive 🙂
I’d be pretty pleased with the 11 minute mile average, though! That’s the fastest I’ve maintained any distance over 2 miles since I started running again in September. I have two 2-mile runs with an under 11 minute mile pace, and my 5K race I did in October was 10:15 minute miles, but that was a race!
So – I’m pretty pleased to know that I can run an under 10 minute mile without dying, and that if we’d started a wee bit slower (20-30 seconds), I think I could’ve maintained that pace for even longer. At 5 miles, I was pretty much done, though – my knee was getting sore, and I don’t want to irritate it too much.
Next weekend, she’s going to come to my ‘hood, and we’re going to do the beautiful park run – I will not try to maintain 10 minute miles on those hills! I love running with people who are faster than me, because it really makes me push myself harder than I do alone – but I do feel a little bad when I can’t maintain the pace.
The rest of the week, I’m just going to concentrate on getting SOME kind of workout in every day – and trying to survive my 1st five-day workweek in many, MANY months. Hopefully I can do it.
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