Start time: 09/07/06, 7:00pm
Location: Old Town Alexandria and the Mount Vernon Trail
Distance: 5.1 miles
Average pace: 8:34min/mile

First, the running stuff. I skipped Tuesday’s run (tummy troubles), so I was eager to get back out on the trail today. We took our first mile a little fast at 8:18 (sorry guys!), so after that I moved to the back of the group and even after slowing down a bit in mile 2 to try and keep everyone from keeling over, we still knocked out the rest at a pretty fast pace (8:58, 8:38, 8:42, 8:31). Phew. (But kicking butt!)

While we were out running, one of the other regulars (whom we’ll call TM) was out in front of us. He’s a (former, I think) marine who usually runs in front of us a little bit, and we often catch him at which point he’ll sprint ahead a bit more. Runs by himself, with headphones on… I’m not entirely sure why he shows up to group runs. Anyway, we caught him with about a mile to go this evening and he couldn’t go any faster so he ran with us for a little bit. Darrell was singing silly songs so TM offered up some cadence. Darrell instantly began to warp the responses (which was pretty funny), and TM seemed a little frustrated but struggled on. TM’s cadence had to do with beating up Superman and marrying Lois Lane, and then all of the sudden this charmer of a couplet came out: “Nine months later we had a baby / He was a fag so he joined the Navy.”

An instant silence fell over the group (we were stopped waiting for a street light to change) and I must have given him a look. Before I could say anything else, the light switched, and the group ran on and left TM behind. Afterwards, we were at the running store getting water and I was about to walk back outside when he came in and walked over to me. “I hope you’re not Navy,” he said, “I didn’t mean to offend anyone.”

“Oh no,” I replied, looking down at him*. “But I’ve slept with enough military men that I understand.” He gave a sort of chuckle and I kept walking outside. I’m not sure if it sunk in or not (and I could’ve been more direct but I was tired and sweaty and am happy I at least fired that one off at him—a blatant lie, I might add, but he doesn’t need to know that) but I’m sure sooner or later it will.

We’ll see if he tries to run with us again!

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=389088

* — I say looking down at him because TM is easily under five feet tall. An unnecessary detail but I can be snappish when I want to.

Start time: 08/24/06, 7:00pm
Location: Old Town Alexandria and the Mount Vernon Trail
Distance: 5.1 miles
Average pace: 8:42min/mile

No, that’s not a typo. It was back to the “old” course (which I’d only done once before) with the Pacers Alexandria group, and Sonia was leading the “9-to-9:30-group.” Well, it was her birthday and she was definitely proving that aging does not make you slower! I’m not complaining, I really enjoyed the workout despite the fact that it made me even sweatier than normal. On the way out we kept feeling hot winds blowing off the Potomac River and we kept thinking a storm was en route. By the end, I certainly looked like I’d been hit by a rainstorm, but no… it was just my body being disgusting as always. (The subject line being the answer to the rhetorical question I wanted to ask as to where the storm went.)

It was a great run, though. We got hit by one or two lights on the way back and I thought I was losing my momentum each time, but it was all good. (9:02, 8:38, 8:36, 8:45, 8:36, and (not even sure why I’m recording this) a 7:25avg for the .1 miles at the end. Too silly!) I feel really good for this Sunday’s 14-miler, hopefully I’ll have someone to run it with. Chris S said he’s going to probably come out and run 4 miles of it with me before turning around, so that’s better than nothing. I’m going to see if I can get Chris McC (provided he’s all healed up) to see how he feels about slumming at my pace and distance for Sunday. Since he’s been sidelined for a bit, I’m thinking it may have a bit of allure to it…

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=389088

Oh yeah, and afterwards a bunch of us went to Tiffany Tavern down King Street and got a beer. Woohoo! Carb up!

Start time: 08/17/06, 7:00pm
Location: Old Town Alexandria and the Mount Vernon Trail
Distance: 4.75 miles
Average pace: 9:16min/mile

Two weeks in a row with the Pacers Thursday group? What is this world coming to?

Start time: 08/10/06, 7:00pm
Location: Old Town Alexandria and the Mount Vernon Trail
Distance: 4.75 miles
Average pace: 9:02min/mile

As I was driving home from work, I kept thinking, “If it starts pouring, I’m not going to the run tonight.” When I got home and changed, it still looked like rain… but none was forthcoming. Finally I grabbed a hat and decided that if I didn’t bring a hat (to shield my glasses from the rain) it would pour, but if I brought one and wore it, we’d all be spared. Sure enough… no rain, just me with a sopping wet hat (and it’s even made out of those tech fabrics) and a reminder why I hate wearing hats while running. Sweat city.

The course for the Thursday run in Old Town changed since the last I was here, due to part of the route being closed off while the old Wilson Bridge is torn down. The new route was a little shorter, and runs by a lot of businesses in the area (and more traffic lights, boo) but still nice and flat unlike my Tuesday runs. It was a nice run, too; even with one or two brief pauses to cross the road we got a 9:02 min/mile pace for the 4.75 miles (9:14, 9:07, 8:57, 9:15, 6:22). I also finally gave the heartrate monitor a try and it seems that my average heart rate was 160bpm (and splits of 149, 160, 160, 165, and 165). I have no idea what this means but with some research hopefully that’ll all get sorted. Still, a very good run!

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=356268

Start time: 07/13/06, 7:00pm
Location: Old Town Alexandria and the Mount Vernon Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Average pace: 9:24min/mile . . . sort of

When I got ready to leave my apartment today to (finally) try out the Old Town Alexandria location of Pacers’s group runs, I thought to myself, “It seems kind of nice outside. I won’t dig out the sleeveless shirt.” And then I also left the half-frozen bottle of water, thinking that yeah, it wasn’t that hot… right?

Ooooof. What was I thinking? Super hot, super humid. On the bright side, I kept a pretty good pace going with Chris. Technically I didn’t really get that pace; Chris, two other runners, and I stopped at the halfway point to refill our water bottles for about two minutes, and on the way back we missed two lights and were stuck for another three and a half minutes. So to be fair, those rest stops helped out a lot. And if I add back in all that time elapsed it’s really a 10:30min/mile pace. But it felt good to look at the little chart I downloaded off the Garmin and know that once I took out those points, I actually did a good job of maintaining a steady pace. Yay!

Looking quite forward to Sunday morning!