Another Saturday run

Went out today on the usual Saturday morning run with the Inside track club. Brandy was there, along with a few others, and all of us planned to run ten miles. Some were tapering down while others were building up. Brandy and I are building up for the Santa to the Sea half marathon and are planning our assault on completing that run in under two hours. Yes, i have done a half in under two before but my goal is for both of us to finish it in under two hours. I think that we can do it by running together during the entire race, keeping a good pace throughout and adjusting a needed. I know that she can do it but she is not quite sure, so my job is to help her stop those thoughts enter her mind. So a-training we will go.

Today was a ten mile run, planned for an easy pace, about ten minutes per mile pace. Started off good and slow to warm up, going about 10:30. We picked it up a little bit in mile two but still a little more than ten minutes. Miles three to five were good and we got there in under 49 minutes. Stopped there to fuel up for the return journey and off we went on our merry ways. The return portion started off where we left off so we knew that it would be a negative split. Each mile got progressively faster, and we really noticed on mile 9 that we were going at a race pace. We actually did mile nine at under 9 minutes! We reminded ourselves to slow down, to think of a recovery pace for the last mile. This was good as it allowed me to complete the return journey without stopping. The return trip took under 48 minutes.

As if that was the only good thing to happen during the run, the others were waiting for us at the end. One group had finished about 8 minutes before and the other group finished about 5 minutes, so they decided to wait for us knowing we weren't that far behind. This made me feel good but even better was it made Brandy feel good. I think it helped her confidence tremendously knowing that the others weren't that far ahead of us. Granted everyone was doing an easy run, but so were we. Our easy runs are the medium speed runs from a couple of months ago. Ten minutes is now our recovery pace and we can consistently go a tad faster. I am not sure if I can maintain the pace we did today - I would have gone faster on my own and would end up walking. So the search for knowing my pace continues but if I can find a way to stay in Ventura on weekends, I will have my running partner who can rein me in while I pull her along at the same time. It's a delicate balance and it continues to be fun trying to find the equilibrium.