5:30 am. Well I did my "fellow-shipping" for the month. A couple of guys from church are training for a 1/2 marathon and my wife thought it would be a good idea for me to run with them, to make new friends :). I had talked to one of them before about running and he told me he could run at about an 8:00 pace, that must be his 100m pace. They were going 12 today, their longest run building up to the 1/2, and the furthest they had ever ran before was 8, so I knew it would be pretty slow going and was ready for that, what I wasn't ready for was over 10min/mile pace, Oh my goodness it felt so slow, they kept telling me their legs were hurting, I just thought to myself, mine are too. If we could just pick up the pace they wouldn't hurt so bad. It's really funny how relative it all is, 2 years ago 10min/mile was my pace too, now it feels like I'm walking. The body is a really strange thing, looking at the 3 of us together you would probably guess I was the slowest, these guys aren't in bad shape, and I'm taller, weigh more and probably have a higher fat content. So what is it that really makes someone run longer and faster than another? And if I was able to go from a 10min/mile avg pace to a 6:30min/mile avg pace in 1 year, then why can't I get to a 5:30min/mile avg in 1 year? Anyway, 12 miles in 1:55:00 9:34/mile avg.
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