Great run today!! Amazing, in fact. This is the last day I'm out of town. I'm at my in-laws house so I ran with The Woodlands Running Club. This town has an amazing running community. There are miles and miles of trails that curve through the woods. Runners are everywhere! I got there a little late because I got a little lost trying to find the meeting place in the middle of all these hundred foot tall pine trees.
I got there just in time to tag along with this group. I didn't even get to ask their pace before we left. Turns out they are the 7:30 per mile group. Oops. That was a little faster than I was looking for. Luckily, we were only doing 4.2 miles, then we were coming back to the parking lot to pick up more people, get our water belts and go out for another 9.5 miles.
Last week I got lost with this runner's club so this time I didn't want to lose anyone. I hung with these guys the four miles... The first two miles, my garmin couldn't find satelites so I didn't even know the pace (but I knew it was fast and challenging for me)... when my watch finally started giving paces and distances, I was looking down seeing times of 7:00 pace... and even 6:50. This was a little scary to me. Amazingly, I did it though. I finished right with everyone else... didn't fall behind in the least! Oh, and there was no stopping for water or anything... The guy next to me said his watch had us at a 7:25 average pace for the whole 4.22 miles. Wow. That's a PR for me.
Ok. So now I knew I couldn't keep THAT up for the next 10... so I tried to find a slower group. The next group I got with did an 8 minute pace... which was still pretty ambitious of me even without considering I ran the first four so fast. BUT I DID IT! I stayed with them and even talked the whole time. It was hard but thank god for caffeine gu which I consumed every 3 miles.
In this group, there were 5 guys who were all in super good shape. One ran a 10k yesterday in 44 minutes. He said he'll get better when it gets cooler. There was one girl other than me... she said her marathon PR was 3:15... but she mostly runs Ironmans and her marathon just recently in an Ironman (after she swam 2 something miles and biked 112 miles) was 3:49. Wow. I can not believe I hung with them. It was fun though. Oh, and also, they told me the route we were taking was the hilly course... they considered it a hill workout.
Splits for the 4.22 miles
First 15 minutes had no pace because my garmin couldn't find satelites.
Mile 3 - 7:23
Mile 4 - 7:26
We stopped for about 5-10 minutes and then...
Splits for the second part 9.5 miles
Mile 1 - 8:27
Mile 2 - 8:14
Mile 3 - 8:15
Mile 4 - 8:10
Mile 5 - 8:11
Mile 6 - 7:57
Mile 7 - 8:09
Mile 8 - 8:04
Mile 9 - 7:53
Last .5 mile pace - 7:39 | 