Start time: 03/07/05, 4:30pm
Location: Local Neighborhood
Distance: 3.75 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 9:57min/mile

Now that’s a little more like it.

Start time: 03/05/05, 9:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 11:45min/mile

I’ve got two short races in the next month: the St. Patrick’s Day 10K on March 12th, and the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler on April 3rd. Both promise to be a lot of fun, but I can’t help but feel like if I’m going to get really good PRs for both events (and barring disaster, I really should!) I need to get out there again. I’ve been pretty slack in February about running during the week, and I felt it on Saturday. Randy and Katie and I ran six miles together around a 12:15min/mile pace, then Randy and I kicked out four more closer to a 10:30min/mile pace. It felt really nice to pick up some speed, but I was definitely huffing and puffing at the end. Clearly, slacker time is over! Time to get moving again…

Start time: 02/15/05, 4:30pm
Location: Local Neighborhood
Distance: 2.5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 12:30min/mile

In case you were wondering what that horrible sound coming from near my apartment was yesterday, it was my run coming crashing to a halt halfway through. I suddenly and without warning got a nasty stitch in my side that derailed me badly enough that after the second of four loops, I gave up. Bleah.

Start time: 02/12/05, 9:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 8 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 11:15min/mile

It’s so nice when you and your group are on the same page in terms of speed. Nice brisk 8-miler on a finally-ice-free trail. Yay!

Start time: 02/05/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 12:01min/mile

Start time: 02/08/05, 5:50pm
Location: Local Neighborhood
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 10:00min/mile

Two, two, two updates in one. On Saturday (after a week of sloth) I met my group for a run, but they were feeling even more slothful than I. Everyone bagged out after six miles, but I decided to hoof it a little further on my own. The group hadn’t been moving terribly fast thanks to the section of the trail we were on getting clogged with ice every half mile or so. I headed out in the other direction and it was much clearer; knocking out four 11-minute miles dropped the average pace down into something a bit more acceptable, though.

Last night I took full advantage of the fantastic weather we’re having in the DC area right now. Gorgeous running weather, and I whipped through the 5-miler even faster than I’d have imagined. In the end my finish time for the distance was 49:59. Ha! Just barely scraping the 10-minute mile point but I did, something that’s a real record for me. I think I’ve been holding myself back too much so it’s time to start playing with speed a little bit and seeing what I’m really capable of. When I finished I was breathing a little hard but I hadn’t for almost the entire distance, so that’s a good thing.

Start time: 01/29/05, 8:00am

Location: W&OD Trail

Distance: 8 miles

Run:Walk ratio: 3:1

Average pace: 12:45min/mile

It didn’t hit me until we were on the trail this morning that it’d been two weeks since I’d gone running, y’know, outside. Yeesh. It was a nice group, especially since right as we were about to begin our friend Mark showed up. He’d already run 10 miles and was going to hit 8 more; he’s training for the Fredericksburg Marathon this spring. We offered to run with him, and hey, the fact that he was running a slower pace was ok with us. (Some of my fellow runners hadn’t been running at all in, um, a while.)

Lots of ice on sections of the W&OD Trail, still, but thankfully no one wiped out on it. And despite the arctic temperatures it went pretty well. We’d started earlier so I could then take my parents to the airport when we were done, but I’d misjudged at what time we should start (and didn’t factor in the whole “people showing up late” aspect) so I ended up only getting in 8 miles instead of 10 like I’d mentally planned, but still a very good run. Now I’m just feeling sleepy and wondering if it had anything to do with getting up a little earlier this morning, or if it’s just time to start catching back up on some ZZZs this weekend…

On the bright side, I think I’m finally thawed back out. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. Did I mention it’s cold out?

Start time: 01/24/05, 7:45pm

Location: Gold’s Gym

Distance: ~5.05 miles

Average pace: ~10:54min/mile

Time: 55 minutes

Ugh. My gym was unbearably hot tonight. How hot? So hot that around 20 minutes in, I was starting to feel like it was August and I was running on a hot summer day. By 40 minutes in I was playing the “well, maybe just five more minutes” game to keep going despite the fact that I was really planning on running for a full hour. And at 55 minutes, utterly roasting, I suddenly felt dizzy and sick. Needless to say, I slammed my hand down on the “stop” button and that was that. I’d drank plenty of water before and during, so I don’t think that was the problem. I think it was just too hot. Geez, that’s something you don’t expect to say in January.

Start time: 01/22/05, 2:00pm

Location: Gold’s Gym

Distance: ~3.75 miles

Average pace: ~10:40min/mile

Time: 40 minutes

It was snowing Saturday morning, so we cancelled our group run. I ended up walking over to the gym and ran for 40 minutes; I was hoping to go longer than that since the gym was fairly empty thanks to the weather, but I hadn’t done any stretching beforehand (bad Greg) between that and the cold my legs were pretty tight. That, and I stupidly left my water bottle on the kitchen counter and when you’re seriously considering stealing the bottle of the fellow running next to you, the thirst is getting hard to ignore. Oops.

Bad planning strikes again! 🙂

Hopefully this week I’ll get my butt in gear and start running three times a week again.

Start time: 01/15/04, 9:00am

Location: W&OD Trail

Distance: 10 miles

Run:Walk ratio: 4:1

Average pace: 12:00min/mile

It was a small group this morning, just me, Chris, and Randy. (Or as I joked, “Guys’ Morning Out!”) The weather was cold, but I have to say that we did really well. We ran an eight-miler together, but since Chris had taken some time off for an injury that was a more than respectable distance for him. Randy and I ran an additional two; when we were done I felt like I could’ve done another three or four without batting an eye, and that was a real relief; it’s nice to see that my body hadn’t forgotten how to run slightly longer distances. It was also nice to know that we really weren’t pushing or trying terribly hard and even with two long “Waiting for the light to change” pauses in the middle we still ended up with a 10-miler completed in two hours.

I talked with Randy a little bit about what pace group I’m expecting to be in, and he thought it was pretty doable and realistic. It’ll be great to run with him (and the others) for another year. We’ve got a really good group of people from this past year that look like they’ll be going through the experience again.