Monthly Archives: June 2005

I’ve temporarily run out of subject lines.

05mi

Start time: 06/29/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:52min/mile

Not really sure what went wrong here. Well, “wrong” isn’t perhaps the best word but by no means up to our usuals in my book. I think it was that second mile where we looked at the watch and it said 11:15… oops. Oh well! Other than that, not too bad, although Julie really needs to remember to 1) take her allergy medicine, and 2) wash off her makeup before we leave the office. Oops. Sweat plus mascara can’t feel pleasant. *shudder*

Oh yeah! Final tallly for June 2005: 76 miles. Woohoo! (By way of comparison, June 2004 was 59.5 miles, and June 2001 was 45 miles. Oh, how I’ve come.)

This just in: still hot ‘n humid outside

05mi

Start time: 06/27/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:27min/mile

Phew! Very hot. Headed out with Julie and Mark, and then two miles in Julie’s knee still was feeling a little stiff so she turned around early so she could take it slower on the way back. Mark and I kept trucking along another half mile to the turn around and then headed back. Even with a water stop we made some really good time, but I felt absolutely drenched afterwards, to put it mildly. Still, I’m happy with the end results, even if the last mile speeding up happened in part because I slowed down to scoot over as a bicycle passed us, and when I started speeding up to catch Mark, he thought I was in a “must speed up wildly at the end” maneuver and started speeding up. Meanwhile, I was still trying to just catch him. Oops.

I think the humidity melted our brains.

12 miles in the heat

12mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 06/25/05, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 12 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 4:1
Average pace: 12:10min/mile

Today was my first 12-miler at my new pace… well, sort of. Normally we wouldn’t have gotten to our “slowdown” distance (which starts at 16 miles), at which point we take the distance a little slower to make sure that everyone makes it to the end of the program injury free. With highs of 94 degrees predicted for today, though, the staff decided that it would be good to not kill everyone in a forced death march up and down the W&OD Trail. So, slowdown time. Instead of an 11min/mile (and a 5:1 run:walk ratio) we headed out the door at a 12min/mile (with a 4:1). So, still faster than I’d ever run a 12-mile distance before.

More importantly? Piece of cake. I felt great at the end, like I could’ve picked up another four or five miles easily. (If I actually could? Another story entirely, because you never know when suddenly wham, you’ve hit your limit.) Generally speaking, though, a really pleasant run.

Even better? All it takes is a 2.5 miler and I’ll pass the amount of milage I clocked for May, and more importantly I’ve broken the 300-miles mark for my distance run in 2005. (304.9 miles, to be exact. All those 5K and 10K races play havok with the decimal point.) Yay! Can’t wait to see when I hit 600 miles…

Just another one of those rainy afternoons

03mi

Start time: 06/22/05, 5:45pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 3 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:17min/mile

When Julie and I started out this afternoon, she asked if we could run just four miles instead of five; she wasn’t able to pop home during lunchtime and let the dog out and didn’t want his little bladder to explode. Within a quarter mile, we were making new plans: run just three miles, and then add on a fourth if the storm that looked to suddenly be arriving in Falls Church hadn’t made it in.

Naturally, as is my luck, it showed up at exactly our turn-around point. I was ready to really hoof it back, but Julie wasn’t up for quite the same speed through the rain so I let her drive the pace the rest of the way home. Still a strong average. I’m sad I wasn’t able to get two more miles in (I’d planned on doing extra mileage and having a total of five miles until the storm changed those plans) but better low mileage than electrocuted-Greg.

Feeling vaguely full

05mi

Start time: 06/20/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:50min/mile

That’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it. Julie had eaten, like, half a cheesecake while in Texas on business last week. (Her excuse: Everything’s bigger in Texas.) I’d eaten my body weight in wedding food. And Mark ate a packet of peanut M&Ms while at the movies. (Ok, one of these things is not like the others.) Still, very consistant mile splits despite having not really sped up much as planned. No real complaints. Looking very forward to speed training in two weeks.

Double digits and all is well

10mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 06/18/05, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile

What a beautiful, beautiful day for a 10-miler. Our half of the group did fantastic, keeping on pace almost perfectly. (The other half once more came back in pieces. Hmmm.) Today was also a big turning point for me, because when I ran the Cherry Blossom 10-miler back in April my average pace was 10:54min/mile. Essentially, 10 miles is the furthest I’ve gone at this pace. Next week takes me into new territory, and based on how I felt today… bring it on, bring it on! Fantastic.

Ow

05mi

Start time: 06/15/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:44min/mile

Mark and I hoofed it on the trail again yesterday, and it was almost startling how much of a difference just a little less humidity made. Same temperature, but it felt a lot better. More importantly, we didn’t have that horrible “dragging” sensation as time went on, staying pretty strong. (Except for that bleeding nipples part that I mentioned elsewhere.) Much happier with my performance for Wednesday. I think it helped that we didn’t start out nearly as fast, so there was less distance with which to go splat.

Speed training starts two weeks from Saturday! Yay!

Sometimes the trail beats you

04mi

Start time: 06/13/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:32min/mile

I went running with Mark after work today and let me tell you, not the brightest move. It’s still really hot and humid, and we didn’t have the advantage of a 7am start time today. There were predictions of a storm coming in so I suggested that we just run four miles, and when we got back to home base we could add on a fifth if we still felt like it. Oh, thank god we did it that way. Our times steadily slid downhill (10:00, 10:24, 10:52, 10:50) and at the end of the last mile we were fairly beat. Mark commented, “Sometimes you beat the trail, and sometimes the trail beats you” and today was definitely the latter.

Oh, and about ten minutes later, the storm did arrive so thank goodness we didn’t bother with that fifth mile.

Is that Buster Poindexter I see?

09mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 06/11/05, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 9 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile

“Hot hot hot” was the order of the day, and it wasn’t even in the 80s! Gotta love the crazy DC humidity. Today’s run was one of attrition; we lost one person two miles in (who switched over to the 11:30 group for the rest of the run), then two more around mile six. The good news was that aside from the occasional water stop we hit all of our miles right on pace. We’ve got a great group, a bunch of real troopers. Our half of the “Cathy O’Brien” group actually fared better than the other half, which I think came back in something like five different sections. Oops.

It’ll be interesting to see how everyone’s doing next week as the temperature continues to rise…

Here comes the rain, again

05mi

Start time: 06/09/05, 6:00pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:00min/mile

It was just me, today; Julie was stuck at work and Mark is getting over a cold. The first mile I took a little fast (9:27), but by mile 2 (10:10) I settled into a good groove… and more importantly, kept it (10:00, 10:08, 10:14) despite the rain that started coming down right as I hit the turn-around point. (Naturally.) I hit my 5-mile point at exactly 50:00 and I’m quite pleased with that. Even better, I didn’t feel like a complete and utter idiot running in a sleeveless top that I got at Target. (So many brands of exercise gear have ludicrous looking sleeveless shirts; do I really need to have armhole slits that go down to my waist? It just makes me look like a hobo at best, or a shapeless blob of fabric at worst.) Who knew that Champion’s C9 line would not only have a good sleeveless shirt but that it would also be the cheapest by far? Yay for cheapest.