Start time: 05/11/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:08min/mile
Phew. Still hotter than I’m used to when doing this ratio. What does not kill me shall make me stronger, though. This one was definitely tougher, though. We lost about twenty seconds on each of the last two miles, and Mark looked like he’d fallen into a pool. (Ah, a fellow heavy sweater.) On the bright side, starting at 8am on Saturday will feel positively heavenly!
Start time: 05/09/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile
Damn. That kicked my butt. I’m not sure if it’s a combination of not being used to a 5:1 (despite being used to that speed) and it getting a little warmer or something else, but man-oh-man was I dragging. Julie was even less thrilled by the time we were done, for that matter, although our friend Mark looked ready for another five. Oof.
Start time: 05/07/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile
Oops, almost forgot to put this down for my records. The 4-miler with the training group felt almost silly to have gotten up early for; it’s very easy to get blaise about this sort of thing after so many years! It was nice to be able to meet the new people in the running group, though, or rather groups since there were so many people in our pace time that we’re split into two. Our pace group leader was still trying to find footing for this particular speed; one mile we were thirty seconds under, the next one thirty seconds over, and so on. It’s a fine art to hitting those times just right but hopefully later jaunts down the W&OD as a group will go smoothly, given time.
Start time: 05/04/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile
Now that it turns out that Julie’ll also be in the 11min/mile group with me, it was easy to convince her to push the pace up by thirty seconds or so. A beautiful day for running, just about perfect. Julie seems to be adjusting to the new pace well, which is nice to see. Going a little faster and closer to my old “maintenance run” speed, of course, is an added bonus. Right now I’m just enjoying being able to go running after work with Julie though, so that’s good. Eventually as it gets hotter I’ll probably shift back into running before work on my own before the temperature gets too high, mind you. (Additionally either this week or next I’m going to probably add in a Thursday running session by myself, now that I’ve looked over the speedwork guidelines for AIDS Marathon this year. Should be fun!)
Start time: 05/01/05, 8:30am
Location: Washington DC (Pennsylvania Ave/Capitol Building area)
Distance: 3.1 miles
Average pace: 8:45min/mile
This is always an emotional race, running alongside brain tumor survivors as well as families who have lost members to tumors. I ran with Julie and Laura for the first mile (9:44), then picked up the pace big time to hit my goal time (8:34 for mile two, and an 8:37min/mile pace for the remaining 1.1 miles). There’s a much longer write-up about the race in my main journal.
Start time: 04/30/05, 8am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 3 miles
Average pace: 9:15min/mile
Another year, another jaunt through AIDS Marathon! I suppose the weather gods were doing their best to make sure everyone knew what they were getting into since it rained the entire time. Ugh. In fact, it rained so much that the underpass right before the turnaround marker flooded out, so technically it was something like 2.95 miles. Tsk tsk tsk. I once again went out a little too fast and ended up with a time that’d put me in the 10:30 group, but knowing that it was not following the rule of “comfortable pace you can hold a conversation at” for thoat first mile and a half, I stuck with the original plan of the 11:00 group. Happily, Julie ended up landing in the 11:00 group (shocking the hell out of her, but I knew she could do it), so we’ll be running together for another year after all.
Race for Hope 5K tomorrow morning. Please, no more rain. I’d like to get a new PR on my journal page of the website!
Start time: 04/27/05, 5:45pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:25min/mile
Julie and I headed out after work for another 4-mile spin, and about half a mile in I said, “Wow, that looks like Mark heading our way.” Turns out it was, so he turned around and ran with us since he’d just started. Mark’s missing this Saturday’s time trials because he’s going to be running the Frederick Marathon on Sunday, but we chatted about who would be in which group. Hopefully he’ll end up joining the 11:00 group; not only is he a nice guy, but I think he could handle it really easily based on his recent race results!
Afterwards I talked with Julie about maintenance runs and she was fortunately in favor of doing them a little faster after another week or so—she says it makes the Saturday runs feel easier, which is so true. I haven’t minded running the 11:30min/miles with her because she seemed a little nervous about the idea and it’s nice to be able to run with someone else, but picking up the pace a bit is a good thing in my book. (Especially since I’ve been running 5-mile stretches at 10min/miles for a while now!) Since we probably won’t be in the same Saturday group anymore, it’s nice to still get some running-together time in.
Start time: 04/25/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:30min/mile
Julie wanted to give her projected new pace a whirl, so we decided to head out after work and try 5:1 on for size. I let Julie direct the pace and she did great; didn’t have any problems keeping the 11:30 going and by the time the 4-miler was done, was feeling really good about being in her new group this year. Yay! (I knew she could handle 11:30 but doubt is a powerful thing. I should know.) Depending on how our schedules are, the idea of getting our twice-a-week maintenance runs in together after leaving work is a good one, at least for May while it’s still nice outside. (Once it gets a little hotter, running before work might become a necessity. Either that or later at night after we’re both already home.)
Start time: 04/23/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 3 miles
Average pace: 9:20min/mile
A bunch of the people in our group wanted to have our own mini 3-mile time trial on Saturday, so that’s all I got around to doing in terms of running. (Run three miles at a comfortable pace, round up to the nearest half minute, then add one minute on and that’s your training pace.) I took the first mile waaaaay too fast thanks to trying to Randy on a subconscious level, and the other two miles were a little disastrous in comparison. If I hadn’t done that, it probably would’ve been a 9:40min/mile pace, which puts me squarely in the 11:00 group for next week. Here we go again…
Start time: 04/19/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 3 miles & 3 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1 & just running
Average pace: 11:10min/mile & 9:20min/mile
I went running with Julie after work today to have a “3-mile time trial” with her. I’ve done several with myself to know what group I should be in, but it was time to see how Julie was doing. Julie’s unfortunately had the remnants of a chest cold that just won’t go away for almost three weeks. (She really needs to go to the doctor to get it looked at to make sure it’s nothing more serious!) We headed out and halfway through the first mile Julie asked if we could take a walk break. She just couldn’t get a good deep breath going on, unfortunately, and as the three miles went on we slowed down more and more. When we finished it was with an 11:10min/mile pace (33:30min), which would place her in the 12:30min/mile training group. It’s an improvement over last year, certainly, but I know that if she could get rid of the cold she’d do much better. She agreed to call the doctor tomorrow morning and hopefully she can get it licked. (I also advocated her waiting until the “second start” on May 14th to start training so she can get fully healed.)
After it was over, I went and ran three more quick miles by myself. I was huffing and puffing a little bit towards the end, but still quite pleased with my finishing time (28:00min). If nothing else, my 5K on May 1st should go quite well… especially since I don’t have to run 3 miles right before starting the 5K! 🙂