Six Miles. 6:30 am. Uphill Both Ways

Day 5
6 miles at 10:42/mile

I'm not entirely sure what got into my head, but when I thought, "six miles" I immediately thought "oh, to the gas stations and back in Lake Point. That would be perfect." And, so, that's where we were headed.

It was early, and Hillary's husband had to work, so she couldn't join us. I was sitting on the curb, wondering what the chances were that both Christina and Hillary wouldn't show so I could go back to bed, when Christina's van pulled up.

We stumbled down to the church and started off. The first mile seemed to go pretty fast and the run got better from there. The first hill was a humdinger, but we were able to keep on pace for quite a bit of it. Then we started downhill. At about mile 2.5, I remember thinking to myself "wow, this is a pretty good run. I'm not breathing hard. I don't feel like dying. We're pretty much on pace." Then we turned around at 3 miles and I realized I felt so good because it was all downhill from the top of the big hill all the way to the turnaround spot. At one point, I looked at my watch and yelped because we were running at a 12:00 pace, way below our pace, so we had to pick it up. But I felt like I was running at a 10:00 minute pace based on how hard I was breathing.

Christina ran a little bit ahead and I tried to catch up, but just couldn't muster the energy to do so. Then she made it across at the stoplight, but I had to wait. Which made it doubly hard to get going again.

However, the run was AWESOME. We averaged 10:36/mile, finishing in 1:03:38. Mile 1: 10:51. Mile 2: 10:39. Mile 3: 10:33. Mile 4: 10:29 (that was the first mile back from the turnaround where I thought we were running so slow). Mile 5: 10:54. Mile 6: 10:13. There were only two miles that we didn't hit our pace target. And they were both the huge uphill parts.

It was decided that for longer runs, we're going to stick to flatter ground, but that we should still run the Lake Point run on occassion so we get the benefit of the hills.

Tomorrow is the 5k. Good times. Good times.