AM. Wayne and I ran the water tank hills this morning. Larry was on his bike again, and brought along our neighbor James, also on a bike. Without speaking, Wayne and I both seemed to agree on pushing the pace a little faster than normal this morning. When we hit the hills, the challenge was to see if the runners could beat the bikers up the hills. The first hill is pretty steep and the bikers seemed to struggle more than the runners. I was slightly ahead of Wayne at the top. I didn't want to run alone, but I also didn't want to give up any hard earned ground. Wayne encouraged me to keep going and not wait for him, so I did. I pushed up the remaining four hills. I finished about 45 seconds ahead of Wayne and never saw the bikes again until I'd run a half mile past the top of the hill and was on my way back. My time from our start in the neighborhood to the top of the hill was exactly 27:00 minutes. The first mile or so only climbs about 100 feet, but then we climb over 600 feet in the next 1.5+ miles. This time isn't fast for many on the blog, but in our little world Wayne and I climbed the hill pretty fast today. We were tired coming back down, but still held a steady pace (not all out) the last 0.6 miles down 1600 N at 6:39/mi pace. Larry coasted this section and still beat us, but we had the satisfaction of having another quality run behind us. I'll find out at noon if I pounded my ankle too hard on the downhills.
PM. Ran the traditional Lake View route with Tom and Nathan. The temperature was in the lower 80's. We could feel the heat, but it wasn't really oppressive and there was a breeze. Tom turned back as planned after a couple of miles. Mile splits were 8:38, 8:17, 7:58, 7:50, 7:39. It was good to see Cory out running again today. Nathan and I were talking afterwards that we think he's not running with us because he doesn't want to slow us down. We all treat our Monday and Wednesday noon runs as easy runs, usually having run a tougher run in the morning. We need to convince Cory to start running with us again.
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