Saturday and More on Friday

After yesterday's track workout, I was a little discouraged. I only ran one of the miles at or below my target pace, and I didn't finish the workout. If I had it to do over, I would have forced myself to do that last mile. Oh well. I was totally spent. At the time Friday morning, I didn't know if I had another mile to give, but I should have failed trying instead of quitting. As punishment, I ran an extra mile on my cool down just because.

Then, Eric F. mentioned that he was going to run at lunch yesterday. I was a little behind on my mileage for the week, so I joined him. It was a nice (hot) lunch time 5 miler at 7:58 pace. I needed something else to make me feel better about the day. So, I got 13 miles in total on Friday, with 4.5 of those really hard (oh how I wish I could say 5 of those at 5k pace).

Today, because of some things scheduled around the house, I was not able to go and join the Fleet Feet group running Cotton Row. So, I slept until about 7:45 (WOW! That's the latest I have slept in a LONG time!!!) and then went for an easy run that began in the rain. It was a very nice run. When the rain stopped, it was warm and steamy, but not too hot. It was really a tolerable day for a run. I didn't know how far I would go when I left the house, I just knew that I didn't want to go faster than 8:00 pace (but I ended up running a few sub 8:00 miles).

At about the 8.5 mile mark, I ran into a friend, Lance, who has been running for a couple of weeks and is already running 4+ miles at about a 9:00 pace. I was glad to join him for about a mile and a half. It's always great to see folks running and to catch up on things going on. Hope to see you running more often, Lance.

I ended up running 11.1 miles mostly at an 8:00 pace. My legs were sore from yesterday's speed work, but nothing beyond normal soreness. I hope to have something in the tank for tomorrow's 10 miler. I'm sure Carl will be pushing me again! I'm looking forward to it... Then, I'm easing up to be ready for CRR 10k. I'm still hoping for sub 40:00, but yesterday's speed work helped me to realize just how ambitious that goal is.