Start time: 12/31/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:45min/mile

Another Saturday morning run… the last one of the year. It was a bit rough; Mark took the lead and was hitting 10:30s and 10:15s for the first four miles, which was clearly killing some people in the group. I offered up several times, “Uh, Mark, you’re losing the group” and he would slow down briefly and then rev back up. Julie finally quit after four miles, and after mile five, Chanty and I moved to the front of the group and reset the pace. Chanty and John were both having problems with the faster pace, and even Craig did not look terribly happy. Once we were in the front (and credit where it’s due, Chanty was doing the best job of setting an 11min pace) it seemed to work better for everyone. Chanty and I stopped after ten miles, and the remaining three guys looked like death warmed over. Mark wanted to run 14 for his marathon training, but I’ve got nothing to prove so we waved goodbye and sent them on their way. If I hear about corpses on the side of the W&OD I’ll know what happened next.

This is the first year that I’ve tracked my milage for all 12 months instead of just the “marathon training” ones, so I don’t have complete data to compare against past years. Here, however, is a ranking of mileage for the year. (Some of the strange mileage is from running 1.25 mile loops, plus some 5K and 10K races thrown in for good measure.)

November: 25.3
March: 37.45
February: 38.5
January: 42.45
April: 52.2
July: 65.5
December: 66
May: 68.3
June: 76
September: 76
August: 88
October: 103.2
TOTAL: 732.9

That October figure is still blowing my mind; my previous high was October 2004 with 91.95. Crazy!

Aaaaand, that’s a wrap. Onto 2006!

Start time: 12/22/05, 6:00pm
Location: Custis Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:13min/mile

Start time: 12/24/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 6 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:55min/mile

Start time: 12/27/05, 6:00pm
Location: Custis Trail
Distance: 5 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:25min/mile

Oops! I’ve been a little remiss in updating here. The only big news is that the Custis Trail is hilly. Very very hilly. Julie and I have continued to run on it for our weekday runs and we pushed through an additional mile on Monday… yep, more hills. It never looked that hilly from my glimpses of it as I drove by along I-66, but perhaps that’s because my attention was better focused on, oh, the road.

Perhaps the biggest sign of its hills is the difference in our pace between running on the Custis Trail versus the W&OD Trail. Julie has moved that Custis is now called “The Billy Goat Trail” and I’m all for that. Hopefully I’ll get to go running on Saturday because I think I’m going to unavoidably miss running between now and then due to other commitments. One final run before the end of the year sounds good, though.

Start time: 12/19/05, 6:00pm
Location: Custis Trail
Distance: 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:40min/mile

Julie and I went running again on Monday, but sick of the snow and ice still clogging the W&OD we instead veered off onto the Custis Trail itself for a change. The new scenery was nice, even though half of it is nothing more than a view of I-66, boy oh boy. We guess-timated where the second mile would end (because we started on the overlap with the W&OD and I don’t have my fantastic new gift of a running GPS unit functioning just yet) based on the fact that we were feeling sluggish, and later I mapped it out on the Gmap Pedometer and it seems to have been pretty dead-on accurate. So, a little slower than normal but right now I’m just A) happy to be running on a weekday, and B) really happy to see Julie getting the mileage back up and her body clearly having an easier time of it than last week.

Hopefully, another 4-miler tomorrow (Thursday), some short distance on Saturday, and maybe even another short distance on Sunday if it’s not raining. It’s nice to have that afternoon break from my family on Christmas, even if it’s just for half an hour. It’s a big reset/recharge button in need of pressing.

Start time: 12/17/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 12 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:00min/mile

Seven of us were foolish enough to decide to brave the W&OD Trail again this morning, which is pretty respectable numbers for winter running based on past experiences. Portions of the trail are still clogged by snow and ice, so one has to be careful; a lot of running off of the trail and alongside through the snow on the grass was necessary to keep from sliding to one’s death (or at least a broken ankle). Julie and Katie ended up just running four, while Chanty stuck it out for ten miles. Mark, Randy, Craig, and I were insane enough to do the full twelve that Mark had marked down for his marathon training schedule; I still have no idea if anyone besides Randy (and even that’s really up in the air) is going to actually run the Frederick Marathon, mind you. Once Mark starts upping the distance some more I’ll probably be cutting out early unless I see a marathon that I’m desperate to run.

Oh, and as an added bonus, I ran into first Pam, then Katie G on the trail. I came seriously close to smacking Pam on the butt (she had headphones on and didn’t know I was coming) but there was that 5% chance that it might not have really been Pam and just looked like her from behind. That’s always hard to explain.

Start time: 12/14/05, 5:45pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 3 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:15min/mile

Julie and I went running yesterday after work and unlike Tuesday I remembered to bring my hat and gloves this time. Phew! Unfortunately, the temperature outside was even colder than before and instead of the top of my head and my fingers feeling like they were ice, my face felt like it was going to freeze and then fall off. Oof. We pushed out three miles (and ran into Mark off running a 6-miler at one point). Brrrr, I’ll look forward to some warmth returning this spring.

Start time: 12/13/05, 6:30pm
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 3 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:05min/mile

Last week I told Julie that if her toe got green light for running again, that we’d start going after work (despite the rather dark conditions) and hoofing it up and down the W&OD. I’ve had bad motivation problems in getting up early and running, and I knew that Julie was in the same boat. With the broken toe, things were even more problematic; after running the 26-miler in October 1st she promptly broke the toe, and all she’d run since then was the marathon on October 30th.

So, Julie asked for a 3-miler to get her back into the swing of things. I said “sure!” and away we went. We ran on the Custis Trail portion of the W&OD since it’s A) well lit, and B) plowed clear of snow. So what we ended up doing was starting at marker 5, running to marker 4, turning around and going back to 4.5, then back to 4 again, and finally finishing at 5. (The Custis veers off right after mile marker #4 and while the logical turn would be to just run on the Custis further, so far as I can tell it doesn’t have its own mile markers.) For someone who hasn’t run in a month and a half (and hadn’t run for a month before that), Julie did fantastic. She was convinced that she was dragging us down (when we finished she even said, “So how slow was I?”) but our splits were 10:46, 11:09, and 11:19. Not bad at all after such a long break (and then freezing once we were out there).

I’m not 100% sure if we’ll get another weekday run in tomorrow or not but next week we’ll hopefully back into the twice-a-week-after-work schedule. It felt really good to me to be back out there other than a Saturday morning.

Start time: 12/10/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 10 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 11:30min/mile

It snowed twice in the past week, and I was a little worried on how much snow would be on the trail. When we started out it looked like the trail had been plowed, and the only ice we had to worry about was where some snow had melted and then refroze in a new position. Then, a mile into the course, we discovered it wasn’t really the W&OD Trail that was plowed… it was the Custis Trail, which overlaps with the W&OD for that fragment of distance. Oops. So, a lot of running off of the trail where snow and ice was still clogging the asphalt, mostly between markers 4 and 2. Between the cold and the repeated slow-downs due to trying to avoid slipping and falling, I’m pretty happy with our pace under miserable conditions.

Start time: 12/3/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 9 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:45min/mile

Oops… I completely forgot to post this back on Saturday. Went out for a run with some people from the old running group, finally. The run itself went well; I had to metro over because I wasn’t getting my loaner car until the afternoon but getting there was pretty easy, if perhaps a bit more of a prelude to the general “it’s cold out” weather.

Afterwards, five of us decided to go to get some breakfast. This is where things get a little amusing. Mark and I hadn’t driven over, so Chanty was going to give me a lift, and John would give Mark a lift. Ali was going to drop her car off at Meineke, which she said was “on the way there” and John & Mark would pick her up as well. Except Ali promptly took off in her car before anyone else was in theirs. Chanty and I got to the restaurant first and couldn’t help but note that we hadn’t seen a Meineke at all on the way there. John & Mark eventually made it there… without Ali. No idea where the Meineke was, and they drove additional distance down the road just to be sure.

We finally called information and got ahold of the Meineke in Falls Church and it was not really that near at all. More importantly, no sign of Ali there. About twenty minutes later, Ali made it there; she couldn’t find the Meineke and was walking around the parking lot looking for John’s car to see if he was there or was still on the road somewhere trying to find Meineke. Reunited, we all ate.

Then, Chanty said she’d give me a ride back to the East Falls Church metro, but I asked if anyone was going down 66 so they could drop me off in Vienna (where my parents are) so I could get my loaner car. John and Chanty both live in that direction, but Chanty wasn’t heading home initially so I said, “Let me grab my bag and then I can hitch a ride from John.” I ran over, got my bag, came back… no John. Turns out he thought I was still getting a ride from Chanty and left. *sigh* I managed to call Mark on his cell phone (now getting a ride back to the metro with Ali) and they turned around and came back to get me.

It seems we can run long distances at the drop of a hat, but simply getting from point A to B in a car? Totally out of our depth.