Return to weekday runs

0, 04mi, pacers arlington

Start time: 08/08/06, 7:00pm
Location: Clarendon and the Custis Trail
Distance: 4.25 miles
Average pace: 9:27min/mile

This run was a little more inconsistent in terms of splits than my last run through (9:02, 10:16, 9:35, 9:09, 2:10), but I do have to remind myself how much hillwork I have waiting for me in that second mile. Still, considering that the last .75 miles is straight uphill and that last .25 pace was an 8:28 average… well, I’m really quite happy. Chris was back, and Pacers Kate (not to be confused with AIDS Marathon Katie) was back from two weeks ago as well. We had a couple of others draft off of us the whole way through, and a little disconcertingly I actually ended up finishing ahead of Chris by a bit; I somehow got Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” stuck in my head (?!?!?!?!) but by god did it work for motoring up those hills. It felt a little odd to not be drafting off of him or Darrell (who wasn’t there) for the end part, but it also felt good to push up without having to mentally latch onto others.

(Oh yeah. I meant to finally give the heartrate monitor a try this run. Guess what I forgot? Oops. I think I’m going to put the monitor inside one of my shoes to try and remember it for Thursday.)

One is the loneliest number?

0, 05mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 08/06/06, 7:00am
Location: Downtown Washington DC
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 6:1
Average pace: 9:20min/mile

Easiest “recovery run” ever—it was just me today (no Stephanie! I hope she and/or Katie are back next week…) but it was such a short run I didn’t care. I’d like to say I thought a lot of deep thoughts and such but instead it was one of those runs where you just leave everything behind and go. And, I have to admit—it was a little fun to be the first one out there, all by myself, waving to each group as I came back. It was almost like being a signal for everyone else that the turn-around was just down the street and they were almost there, because I was already coming back through. It’s nice to spread the good word. 🙂

Unscheduled Run!

0, 03mi

Start time: 08/05/06, 6:30am
Location: Capital Crescent Trail
Distance: 3.4 miles
Average pace: 9:08min/mile

I actually wasn’t planning on running today, but it suddenly hit me this morning that one of us would need to run a little over 1.5 miles down the CapCrescent trail in order to mark the turn-around point. Soyini was in charge of “home base” and Chris was told he’s not allowed to run by his doctor, so I was very happy I always bring my running shoes to the site just in case. The actual distance down the trail from the water stop (where I could park my car) to the turn around was 1.7 miles, and once I woke up things went great. The first mile was a 9:25, the second a 9:13, and the last 1.4 miles were at an 8:51 pace. It’s nice to feel one’s self speeding up (without really trying to!) as the run continues rather than slowing down…

Since I hadn’t run all week because of the heat, it was nice to get back out there. I’ve got a teeny tiny run with AIDS Marathon tomorrow (5 miles) so this was a good way to get back into the saddle.

There’s no place like home

0, 10mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 07/29/06, 7:00am
Location: Downtown Washington DC
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 7:1, then 6:1
Average pace: 9:30min/mile

I ran with the Saturday group this morning and… phew! Apparently there really is no place like home. One big problem was that the 9:00 group is really small, so the two groups apparently merge on a regular basis. The problem was, in the words of the coach at the site, “That group really runs between an 8:30 and 9:00 pace.” Turns out there’s someone else normally there that sort of takes the 9:30 part of the group under her wing, but wasn’t there. Yay. The good news is that Katie (from last Sunday) was there so the two of us ran together. The group was fast out of the gate and about two-and-a-half miles in we gave up on keeping up with them. So we had a perfectly good run together, although by the end I felt a little queasy and dehydrated; a combination of a Paula-Radcliffe-esque need for a bathroom break (thankfully unlike everyone’s favorite winner of the London Marathon, I hung onto my decorum for the last mile) and perhaps eating a little too much cookie dough while baking last night. Oops.

On the bright side, we’d been zooming enough at the beginning that even with slowing down a tiny bit for the end stretch, still a solid 9:30 pace. (And ultimately it was just an extra two minutes of walking at one point, and another brief walk break when I sucked down water into my windpipe. Whoops.) Very, very, very nice people at the Saturday site, but I think despite Sundays being just me and Stephanie most of the time I’ll take that. Definitely.

The hills are alive…

0, 04mi, pacers arlington

Start time: 07/25/06, 7:00pm
Location: Clarendon and the Custis Trail
Distance: 4.25 miles
Average pace: 9:24min/mile

With the heat not where it was a week ago, it was time for another after-work run with the Pacers group in Clarendon. And of course that means… hills!

So the first three times on this route, it kicked my butt in varying degrees (9:57min/mile; 10:17min/mile; 10:36min/mile). So today I headed out with Darrell, along with two new runners (Kate and Pam). It was nice to talk with Darrell for a bit, and the new runners down at the slow part of our spectrum did pretty well too. I just kept pushing, and while that final climb felt it was killing me (and Darrell pulled ahead a bit), I felt I was moving at a good clip. So then I pulled up my splits and… wahey! 9:14, 9:29, 9:28, 9:38, and for the fraction of the last mile an average of 8:52. I’m thrilled with this; not only because of a really good average for a really tough course, but how consistent my splits were. I’m utterly delighted. Yay!

Woot!

0, 09mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 07/23/06, 7:00am
Location: Downtown Washington DC
Distance: 9 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 6:1
Average pace: 9:30min/mile

What a nice run it was today! Yesterday was uncomfortably humid when I was out helping with the Marine Corps Marathon training program, so this was a real study in contrast; nice cool breezes, and while humid nowhere near as bad as yesterday. Stephanie couldn’t be there because of work, but Katie from the Saturday run group was there so I had someone else to run the 9:30s with. Additionally, the two members of the 10:00 group (Scott and Pary) decided to join us, which was nice for added company—especially because on Sundays when Stephanie can’t be there and no one else from the Saturday site shows up, I’ll be running with them anyway.

Anyway, it was a really good run. Katie was fun to talk to, the mileage just sort of whipped on by, and before we knew it we were done. Scott and Pary slowed down a little bit towards the end but seemed to still be in good spirits. And, since I’m going to probably run with the Saturday group this next weekend (afterwards I’ll be heading out of town for a mini-vacation) it’s good to know someone from that site. Best of all, we were really on pace for almost the entire thing, and perhaps most importantly towards the end. When I finished at the end, I thought to myself, “Yeah, it should be like that.” So yay!

“…and it’s 95 degrees in the shade…”

0, 04mi

Start time: 07/18/06, 7:30am
Location: Arlington Boulevard Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 6:1
Average pace: 9:50min/mile

Knowing that the DC area is in a super-scorcher heatwave at the moment, I wisely decided yesterday that I would not be running with the Pacers Tuesday Night group at 7pm. Ultra-hot + hills = dead Greg on the side of the trail. So, instead I went running before work. Still quite nasty out, but not as bad as it would’ve been after work.

I fiddled with my Garmin 301 this morning and set it for intervals to see how that worked out. It does a good job, but the one frustrating thing is that when I download the data it gives me only the breakdowns for the 6min and 1min laps, not the mile-laps that I’ve set it to do otherwise. Hmmmm. I think what I’ll just have to do if I need something to beep intervals at me and I want to use the Garmin is clip my regular watch around my water belt and let it handle the intervals while the Garmin does my mile-lap measurements.

Anyway, I did glance at the Garmin as I hit each mile or so (it helps to have a route you already know) and while I started to slow down a bit in miles 3-4, it was still a lot more consistent this morning than I’d been in a very long time out on my own. A much more graceful series of splits; if I had to guess I think it was something like 9:30, 9:30, 9:45, 10:30. That last mile I was feeling super overheated and made the conscious decision to slow down a little bit. Honestly, it was the hottest I’ve felt while running in a long while. An ice cold shower afterwards felt nothing short of heavenly.

If I run again before the weekend (which I’d like to) and if it’s still nasty out, it’ll be at the gym on a treadmill. Between the heat and “red” air-quality issues (my throat feels a little raw now, although nothing like a couple of years ago when I stupidly ran in the morning of a “purple” air quality day) it just seems stupid to do this again, even if I got up even earlier to do so. Thankfully the heat’s supposed drop a bit on Saturday and Sunday, which is good for our poor Marine Corps Marathon runners who have a 16-miler scheduled. (Good thing it’s also time for the pace slowdown, plus a 6am start time.)

Oozing my way across DC

0, 08mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 07/16/06, 7:00am
Location: Downtown Washington DC
Distance: 8 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 6:1
Average pace: 9:53min/mile

Dang, it sure was sticky and humid this morning… everyone looked like moving puddles of sweat.

Stephanie was back so I ended up running with her. We were on pace for a lot, then definitely slowed down a bit at the end. No splits, alas, so I’ve got to go entirely based on my total time. Not quite up to par but considering the conditions and that last week at this time I was at an 11min/mile, I’m more than satisfied. Next week I might have to run with the 10min group since Stephanie may have to work, mind you, so we’ll see how that goes!

“There are worse things I could do.”

0, 05mi, pacers alexandria

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!