Start time: 01/08/06, 9:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 6 miles
Average pace: 9:33min/mile

I met up with Dave, Dennis, Cal, Rachel, and Betty to run this morning. I’d done speed training with all of them but Betty, so I knew that this was a group of speed demons and that I’d be probably pushed a little bit beyond my comfort level. Ho ho ho. Understatement of the century. Yep, they’re fast all right. We took off pretty quickly and Rachel & Cal were quickly in the lead. Looking at my watch I kept watching the mile splits go by… 9:45… 9:32… 9:18… I finally slowed down a little bit and pulled off my workout pants (I had shorts underneath, don’t get too excited/horrified) because it was definitely a warm day. I spent the rest of the time trying to make up what I’d lost, though, to catch everyone else. Mile 5 was a 9:07 so I certainly put in the old college try to do so! Dave slowed down for the last half mile because he said he had a stitch in his side. I don’t know if it was true or not but I’m not complaining regardless.

I was both happy and frustrated with my finishing time (57:19). On the plus side, my old speed training pace was a 9:30 so it felt nice to have my average be pretty close to that without getting a quarter mile walk between each full mile. On the minus side… I can’t help but look at some of my previous times and feel a little discouraged. My Capitol Hill Classic 10K finishing time was a 58:06 and that was with an additional .2 miles, and doing it all at a 4:1 run:walk, no less. (And my last 5K, which was admittedly just half the distance, was at an 8:31min/mile.)

If there was ever a huge flashing neon sign that I have picked up some extra pounds the past three months, that was it. Hi, my name is FAT. Time to start really watching what I’m eating and try and shed the layer of blubber that reappeared when I wasn’t paying attention. (I exaggerate a bit, but not much.)

EDIT: Oh yeah. Left foot fell asleep again; it did so back on November 16th, which was the first time I’d had that since 2002. *sigh* I’m going to have to start tagging those entries so I can see if this is going to be a regular thing that I need to look into again, or what.

Start time: 11/16/05, 7:50am
Location: Arlington Boulevard Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 9:53min/mile

I finally forced myself to get up early on a weekday and go running. Sure, I do it on the weekends all the time, but the last time on a weekday where I went running before work rather than after? Apparently March 22nd, 2005… which is also noted as the only time in 2005 up until that point where I’d run before work instead of after. Yeesh.

I decided to give the Arlington Boulevard Trail a try since it was actually daylight; I don’t know how well lit it is at night and wanted my first experience to be one that I could walk away from. Well, I’ve driven up and down Route 50 may times before but it seems the one thing I never noticed is that it’s full of rolling hills, or at least in the portion between 10th Street and Hudson Street. On the whole it went well; the on- and off-ramps for Washington Street didn’t get me killed like I feared, and running back and forth twice on a 1.25-mile stretch that I’d mapped out felt almost like old times. (Even down to segment #2 being the slowest: 11:56, 12:37, 12:31, 12:18.)

I actually had two concerns while out there. The first is a minor one: I need new headphones. My old running headphonese broke months ago and while I’ve been trying to give those earbuds that all my iPods come with a whirl, they just don’t stay in very well. Hopefully a stroll up to Myer Emco will fix that. The second one was a little worrying; around mile 3 it felt like my left foot was on the verge of falling asleep. This is a problem I actually had back in 2002, where it was determined that I have several blood vessels clustered around a nerve in my left foot and when I ran they were expanding and pinching the nerve. The solution turned out to be wearing wider shoes so there was a little more room for my foot in there. Hopefully this was just because I wasn’t wearing thin-enough socks this morning, because the idea of wearing 4E shoes is a little terrifying. (Cue up the circus music.) Fingers crossed!

Oh, and Amy Ray’s “Blender” (from her second solo album Prom) is one of the all-time best running songs ever. Just thought everyone should know that.