Start Time: 4/29/08, 7:30am
Location: Arlington Boulevard Trail
Distance: 3 miles & 2 miles
Average Pace: 7:31min/mile & 9:28min/mile
Total Miles For April: 26 miles

After a late start in the morning (I’d planned to start running about an hour earlier!) my plan was to run the mile repeats workout; run 3 miles, each at around 85% effort, with “full recovery” between each one. But how long should I recover after each mile? I puzzled on that one as I ran my warm-up (9:09). I finally figured I’d play it by ear, and set off for the first mile… which was done in 7:09, aka faster than the mile I ran on Saturday. Oops! A bit too fast. Now to be fair, there is a slight downhill grade for this stretch of the trail, but still.

After 3 minutes of slowly walking around, I started heading back and quickly realized two mistakes. First, I should’ve rested a tiny bit more, I was feeling winded really quickly. And second, if the previous leg was slightly downhill, this stretch was slightly uphill. I figured I would be at least a minute slower, and I was only off on that guess by a few seconds (8:04). This time, I waited about 5 minutes before finally heading off on the last mile, which was much more reasonable (7:21). Then a low cool-down run home (9:47) and I was all done for the day. Since I knew I wouldn’t be running on Wednesday, a good wrap for the month of April.

Start Time: 4/26/08, 7:00am
Location: Washington & Lee High School
Distance: 2.5 miles
Total Miles For April: 17 miles

Due to an elementary school track group that shows up at 8am, we shifted our time back to 7am for Saturdays. That’s fine by me, actually. Get everything done with and have lots of time to spare. After a warm-up mile, we did what last week’s elementary school group had kept us from doing—a timed mile run. Now, I knew that Emma is normally faster than me, and Laura’s right around the same pace. But there were also a lot of new faces and who knows what to expect from them?

Still, I went up into the front of the group and started off for four laps around the track. I actually ended up in the third lane, with two women that I’d never met before pacing along. For something like this, even though there’s an obvious place to count off progress (each lap) in my head I viewed it as eighths; having the number turn over in a minute or less somehow makes it easier to focus. By the time I’d finished the first half lap, the other two women were still very close to me, but I knew in the next curve I could safely shift into the first lane without doing so mere paces in front of them. And when I hit the first lap (1:45) I was clear of everyone else. But of course, things can change, right?

After I finished my second lap (1:58), taking it a little slower as to not burn out (I’d definitely given an extra little push to get clear of the others), I glanced over my shoulder. Emma was in fact about a quarter of a lap behind me. Good to know. I hit the third lap a little faster (1:53) and felt good heading into the final stretch. I was picking up a bit of speed and had a quarter lap to go when I could hear Emma’s feet pounding the pavement in a sprint, making her move to pass me. “Oh no you don’t!” I yelled and hit the gas as well. As we crossed the finish line (1:43)… victory! Emma was maybe just a second behind me at most, but with a 7:19 I’d beaten her. So rare! (I better enjoy that while I can.) Laura was just behind the two of us, looking pretty strong as always.

Afterwards we had four 200-meter runs, with each one supposed to be a little faster than the previous—and with the idea to pick up the pace at the 100m mark. For the first two, it was more or less the same; at the 100m mark, Emma would zoom by me and finish a bit ahead, with me hot on her heels. For the third and fourth, though, I was able to finish first without her overtaking me—and since each one was indeed faster, that felt great. (0:41, 0:40, 0:39, 0:36)

A very good workout, both in terms of running and also a nice ego-boost.

Start Time: 4/19/08, 7:30am
Location: Washington-Lee High School
Distance: 1.25 miles & 4x100m
Total Miles For April: 6.5 miles

I took two weeks off of running after the Cherry Blossom disaster, which felt really nice. I did a lot of rowing, elliptical, and spinning to stay active, but stopped pounding the pavement. But, last Saturday everything started back up again. We ran about a mile and a quarter in our warm-up (including up and down the bleachers! Ugh!) and did a bunch of drills (butt-kicks, knee-highs, cross-overs). We then ran four 100m drills, each one faster than the previous, which was fun. (22:88, 19:94, 16:56, 14:11) The plan was to then run a timed 1-miler, but another group was also using the track and it was too crowded so that part was postponed until next week. Oh, darn.