Thursday, June 7, 2007

Cleveland Park Run

This morning I rolled out of bed at 4:30 to meet up with some other TNT teammates. There are weekday runs at 6AM at Cleveland Park, which is downtown. Since Phil started his new summer schedule, I won't be driving him to work on Thursdays anymore, which means I can meet up with some others to run together. Yeah!

I was a bit nervous about "ruining" everyone's run. But the girl who organized the runs encouraged me to come. God, am I ever glad I did! This morning, it was just Emily, Chris and me. Emily is sort of new, but faster than me. And Chris is already a runner- he has run 2 marathons. We started out nice and easy, at a conversational pace. But there are lots of hills here- some very hard ones. I hung with them, and hung with them, and hung with them. Much of the time I may have been about 20 yard back, but I continued to run. I did have to walk 3 times- each time was definitely less than 30 seconds, and the first 2 were after hills. Chris and Emily were so fantastic about encouraging me that it just helped me so much! We did 4 miles total, and the best I can figure is that our pace was somewhere between 11:15-12:00/mile pace. Not super fast, but it was pretty fast for me! I was SO thrilled to do so well. It is just easier to push yourself when you run with others- at least for me!

I am feeling pretty good about this week's training. Tomorrow is a rest day, and then Phil will be racing the sunrise race with me Saturday morning- an 8K (5miles). Then we will be driving up to see my family, including my cousin who is on leave from Afghanistan. Yay!!!

2 comments:

The Traveling Yogi said...

Congrats on the run! I'm just impressed that you got up at 4:30 for it. As much as I hate the afternoon Texas heat, I just can't get up any earlier during the week to get in morning runs. Sounds like you are doing great.

Katie said...

Hey Patti! I'm happy your run went so well! It's true that it helps to be with other people, no matter what you're doing. When I used to play tennis, I always played better when I was playing someone a little bit better than me.

Had to throw out some failed sodo bagels this morning, one bread experiment gone bad. Hope my next attempt turns out better. =)