With Wayne being ill this week and Larry not training for a marathon
I suspected they might only want to do 10 or 12 miles today. I've been
feeling good and wanted to go a bit longer so I went out and ran 4 easy
miles before meeting up with them. I stopped off at home in between
where I hit the bathroom, took a gel, ate half a banana, and drank some
water. I also dropped off my jacket and changed into a dry shirt. I
wasn't going to tell them I had run early, but it's hard to keep
secrets from running buddies. We ran the canal road this morning. It was a beautiful morning. It felt great to be out running. As
Larry isn't training for a spring marathon, he turned back a little
earlier than Wayne and me. We hoped to catch him on our way back, but
didn't see him again until we got back to the neighborhood. Wayne really pushed me hard the last six miles or so. I was just trying to hang on. We went from 9:30 to 8:30 to sub-8:00 pace...much of which was on the gradual uphill while running in the upstream direction on the canal road. The pace was slower than what we hope our Ogden marathon pace to be, but it was definitely a hard marathon pace effort. It felt good to feel healthy enough to push the effort. It's days like this...good buddies, long miles, hard effort, beautiful weather...that make running such a wonderful pursuit.
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