Today the group met at Parkway Palisades, but we didn't really hit the hills too hard--we're saving that for Thursday. We did warm up around the Parkway Palisades neighborhood, then when we regrouped, we went over to the main hill and ran that once. My time was 8:27. Then we went to the trail to run some tempo/harder intervals. My idea was to run for 10 minutes comfortably hard, then 5 minutes really hitting it. The only problem with my plan was it was dark and I could not see my watch, so I had to guess on time. Fortunately, Cheris came up on me at the end and let me know how much time was left. In the 15 minutes, I ran 1.94 miles, with the avg. pace about 7:40. As we were standing around recovering, I thought I wanted some incentive to run the next one faster, so I came up with my brilliant idea to have the speedies start behind and then try to chase and catch up with the rest of us. What a difference it makes when you're running "scared." This time in 15 minutes, I covered 2.06 miles with the average pace 7:19. I was pleased because I haven't averaged that fast in a two mile run in quite a while, so even though I don't really like the idea of everyone wanting to run us down, it does get us to run faster than we would otherwise, so it seems worth it to me. Some of us then ran our main hill again. I wanted to take this one easier, but Nancy R was running by me, so naturally we were pushing each other. Time on that was 8:32. It was all a lot of fun, as always with our group. Later this afternoon, I made it to the Rec Center for 1 hour of pool running. I love pool running, it's so relaxing and rejuvenating to the legs. I'll give myself 4 miles for that (1 mile for each 15 minutes). |