The Long Run

13.49 miles, 9:31 pace

Ran with Jamie and Cynthia, started out at Target near Suncoast and 54 and headed south towards Lutz Lake Fern Rd, and then kept going onto the new section of Upper Tampa Bay Trail.  My legs were a bit tired today but easy to just go along with the group.  My garmin died right before 6 miles (5.99), but got the pace and distance from Cynthia after the run.  Temp was in the 40's but felt pretty good, wore just the right amount of layers.  I did get hungry on the way back (which doesn't happen too often on runs).

So, pretty happy to get nearly 41 miles in two days.

6.04 mi, 52:35, 8:42 avg

Ran on the Starkey Bike trail starting out at Longleaf at 7:00.  Andy's track team was meeting there for an extra run since today was a school holiday.  Pretty good steady pace, slowed down the 5th mile, then picked it up a little bit at the end.  This was Andy's longest run (he's been running 4-5 miles for the "easy" runs in addition to the track workouts).  Pretty fun Monday morning run.

8.23 mi, 1:09:48, 8:29 avg

Ran at Longleaf with the Striders.  Out and back run with a little bit faster on the way back and finished while the coffee was still set up and remembered to give Clarke my water contribution of 70 small bottles of water from Costco.  It was a pretty fun morning.

8.38 mi, 1:05:00, 7:45 avg

Nice cool 48 degrees.  Decided today would be a challenging run.  Goal was 5 miles at 6:55 average plus warm-up and cool down.

Felt pretty good at the start, did about 1.5 mile warm then started the tempo portion.  I seemed to get on pace quickly and easily but holding it was not so easy.  I was over 7:00 for the firt mile (7:07), then I had to squeeze through a gate to get to the nbhd part of my usual route, so my pace slowed a lot for the second mile which I gradually got back most of but finished mile 2 with 7:27 but at the end of that mile I had picked up momentum and did the next three miles at 6:37, 6:39, and 6:37. 

So, end result was 6:54 pace for 5 miles but not quite the way I planned.  When my pace slowed on mile 2 and I thought about scrapping the run I decided it was just going to be based on effort no matter what the pace came out to be.  That seemed to get me motivated to keep going and pace picked up also.

8.64 mi, 1:15:00, 8:41 avg

Ran with Joe and Jamie in the nbhd.  We all did a little over 6 miles together then I continued the long way back to my house and finally finished up with 7 x 25 second strides with 50 second jogs between.  Not my fastest, especially at first but did the job to practice leg turnover.  It's like a fun mini-speed workout.  Weather was great and the miles with friends rolled along pretty smoothly.

16.09 mi, 2:23:19, 8:54 avg

Ran with Joe, Jamie, and Cynthia from Longleaf, up Starkey Blvd and into Starkey Park out almost to the power lines.  Was a nice and cool 50ish degree kind of morning.  I had some dread going into the run and last night but my legs were nice to me and the easy pace felt easy and I gradually picked up the last three miles - 8:19, 7:45, 7:19

Part of the reason I picked it up though was needing to get back in time to watch Andy at his track meet.  Meet started at 10:00 although he didn't get to run until about 3:15 - a lot of sitting around in the sun and seeing the temps climb - to about 81 degrees.  Still did really well with 2:32 for the 800m event.  This was his first official time so now he has a starting point.