Getting back up to speed

Start time: 07/09/06, 7:00am
Location: Downtown Washington DC
Distance: 7 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile

Rick Carter: “Sounds like you’ve been doing everything right to get back from your injury.”
Me: “Yeah, but it’s still hard to accept slowing down for a bit.”
Rick: “So true!”

This morning actually went really well. Once I’d accepted on Friday morning that I couldn’t run in my 9:30 group (more on that shortly) and needed to slow down, my return to the training program was a breeze. I ran with the 11:00 group this morning; a little quiet but very nice. No alumni in the group, so I got questioned a bit on what it’s like to run a marathon (things like packet-pick-up, starting corrals, and sports gels). Really good people, and I wouldn’t mind running with them another week. I still haven’t figured out exactly what group I’m going to run in for the 8-miler…

…and therein lies the problem. When I ran the 4-miler, the fastest group was me and Stephanie as the 9:30 pace group. There were five or six people in the 10:00 group below us, and I was hoping that perhaps they’d merge with ours. Instead? I got there today and the fastest group I could definitively recognize as being one was the 10:30 group. No sign of Stephanie (who’d said she might be running on some Saturdays, but I wonder if me being out two weeks made her decide to shift there entirely) or anyone from the 10:00 group at all. Hmph. The 10:30 group had a whopping 3 people in it; while I’ve run in a small group (2002 in particular) I must admit that I’m happier with higher numbers.

Hopefully some of the 10:00 people will come back. Or perhaps once grok is back up to speed we could run together on Sundays? (I have no idea what his training pace will be, although I know he’s still a bit faster than I.) If not, I guess 10:30 will be it, which is a bit disappointing, but doable. Still, we’ll see. There’s a long training season ahead, who knows?