Saturday Quick Pace!

OBJECTIVE
10 mi. w/8 mi. @ 8:24-54/mi. & last 2 mi. @ 7:55/mi.

ACHIEVED
8.92 mi. (9:16/9:01/8:42/8:48/8:39/7:59/7:48/7:41/7:06 [.92 mi])

5:28 AM 72° 94% 0 mph

This run obviously didn't go as planned! Here's the explanation. Cameron had a doubleheader in Katy starting at 10 AM. Katy's an hour drive from the house and of course the players have to be there an hour early. This made for a less than leisurely morning. I checked the Spring Runners board last night and saw they were planning a 6 AM run. "They" being Bob Bond and anyone who chose to join him. Their plan was for 8 or 10 miles. That was too late of a start for me so I planned to drive to the 10-mile run turnaround point and start early enough to catch them when they started their run. Other than the fact I got a bit of a late start, everything was generally on schedule. I figured if I ran into them before I made it the their starting point, I'd just run with them and add on to the end of my run for 10 miles.

You can see from my splits, I was on schedule pace-wise over the first 4 miles. I met up with a huge group of ChampionsFit runners at the gate leaving the Y property so I just missed their start by about 300 yards. I'll call that perfect timing. Bob Bond was in the group along with a couple other Spring Runners. Bob broke with a couple other guys while I was still making my way through the group and talking with Stan (???). I caught Bob. He was talking to another guy I hadn't met. We stayed together and chatted as we pulled away from the group. Bob just ran the San Diego marathon two weeks ago. So we talked about his run there, about my physical condition, etc. I feel the pace is fast but I figured it was just relative to my slow start. Finally I can't deny the urge to look at my Garmin and we're clipping along under 8:00/mi. At that point, I decided to hold on as look as I could and just end the run when I got back to the car. Bob dropped off a little over 3 miles into his run. That left Sean and me. He talked small talk and maintained the pace. I didn't feel extremely pushed at the pace but I was working. I think this may have been an easy pace for Sean. I started connecting the dots of who this guy was. I'm fairly certain he's Sean Easton, the Head Coach of the ChampionsFit Green Group (8:30 pace and faster). His wife ran with us on a Saturday a month or two ago. Anyway once we made it to Spring Cypress Road where my car was. Sean took a couple minutes to show me a yoga-style stretch for my IT bands. Interesting that I hadn't seen this one before .... It seems to work. He suggested doing each leg for 5 minutes a night. I figure it's worth a try.

So that's how my run ended up shorter and faster than planned.

PRE RUN
ginger snaps & water

POST RUN
SlimFast
Later, 5-grain oatmeal w/skim milk, multivitamin & water