Start time: 12/31/10, 11:00am
Location: North Arlington
Distance: 6 miles
Average pace: 8:57min/mile
Total Miles For December: 50 miles
Total Miles For 2010: 635 miles

One last run for the year. It’s been a strange year in many ways; less mileage, some slowing down, a bit of a loss of focus. But 635 miles for the year is still a hell of a lot better than 0 miles. In some ways I feel like this was a transitional year, although to what I’m not entirely sure. Guess I’ll find out in 2011.

(And fittingly, I accidentally hit the lap button during mile 4, so all my splits are at strange points in the run from that point on. Oh well.)

Start time: 12/24/10, 8:00am
Location: Columbia, Maryland
Distance: 7 miles
Average pace: 10:10min/mile
Total Miles For December: 40 miles
Total Miles For 2010: 625 miles

Steve and I drove up to Columbia, MD to meet Stephanie and Rich and go for a run with them on their home turf… which turns out to be just a mile away from Centennial Lake, where this year I ran the Columbia Triathlon. And of course, that meant… hills! Been a while since I’ve done any sort of hills whatsoever, so it felt good to get out there for a few. A couple of spots had a bunch of ice so we had to tread verrrrry carefully, but we all survived, and it was a nice change of scenery.

(10:00, 10:38, 10:07, 10:08, 9:56, 10:31, 9:50)

Start time: 12/18/10, 7:40am
Location: National Mall, Downtown DC
Distance: ~8.5 miles
Average pace: 10:11min/mile
Total Miles For December: 33 miles
Total Miles For 2010: 618 miles

Started with John again for the first two miles, then we swung back around and picked up Ben and Bill for the rest of the route. Well, what was supposed to be the rest of the route, except with some uncleared sidewalks ahead we veered off Constitution for a while and ran around some parts of downtown and near Federal buildings. Ben had a 10:30 appt so at one point we swung back near the car and he was able to grab his phone and wallet, with the plan to be that we’d then end the run up at the Starbucks instead of near the cars and we could save the extra time from walking there.

Well, except we swung out too far towards the end, and we finished the run not even remotely close to the Starbucks. For reasons unknown to me I turned the GPS off for a while as we continued to jog towards the Starbucks, then finally turned it back on. My best guess is that we ran about an extra half mile or so, but who knows? No bigs. Just a little extra burn, which was nice.

(9:44, 9:50, 9:36, 10:34, 10:36, 10:24, 10:24, 10:13)

Start time: 12/11/10, 7:40am
Location: National Mall
Distance: 8 miles
Average pace: 10:19min/mile
Total Miles For December: 21 miles
Total Miles For 2010: 606 miles

This morning’s run was a game of addition, really. At 7:40, John and I went and ran two miles together, finishing back where we started to then pick up the rest of the group. Stephanie and Rich were stuck in traffic, so we told them the route and headed back out with Ben and Mark in tow. Around mile 5 we picked up Stephanie and Rich (who crossed over to the second half of the route and caught us that way, so they only missed about a mile) and finished up the run with 6 people. Too funny.

Having run a few miles together with just John these last two weeks, it’s been nice to find that when it’s just us we definitely speed up a bit (just like when it’s just me and Dave). Good to know! John whipped my butt at the Veteran’s Day 10K so getting him to push me is a good thing.

(9:24, 9:44, 9:49, 10:38, 11:06, 10:37, 10:50, 10:20)

Start time: 12/4/10, 8:00am
Location: Washington DC
Distance: 6 miles
Average pace: 10:13min/mile
Total Miles For December: 6 miles
Total Miles For 2010: 591 miles

Ran with Ben and John, plus new additionals Mark and Stephen (who had also done the Veteran’s Day 10K). I’d joked when I sent out the route that since we were running a big rectangle there was a point where people could poop out early and head back to the cars and order all of us hot drinks. As it turned around, right after mile 4, Ben, Mark, and Stephen decided to do just that. (Well, except for the ordering of drinks, but they did wait for us at the cars so we still got the shared warmth afterwards.) John and I ran the last two miles and it was a nice, if slightly cold morning. I’d had some upper body soreness for a few days from finally going back to the weights after a long time away from them, and the run finally loosened them up. Yay!

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4182266

(9:37, 10:31, 10:27, 10:35, 10:27, 9:41)