PUSH THE PACE

I had 12 miles planned for tonight. Since most of my team only had a 45 minute run planned, I got there early and did a 2 mile warm-up before joining everyone else. Tuesdays are usually hills or stairs. Tonight we ran an out and back course that contained one long, gradual hill followed by a short steep hill. Since those were the only 2 hills we ran, I considered that a break from the hills.

Usually, I’ve been hanging back on these workouts a little. However, lately I’ve been thinking that I need to push the pace more on Tuesdays. I keep thinking back to my college days when every easy run seemed like a tempo workout for me. I was a lot faster back then – on a lot less mileage. Yes, granted I graduated 9 years ago, but given my increased mileage, I think I should be faster than I am. Therefore, I figured it can’t hurt to push the pace on Tuesday’s group runs. I tried that tonight and it worked really well, probably because 1) I felt really good and 2) I was running with Jenna, who has a 2:50 marathon PR. We just started talking and ended up pulling away from the group within a mile. We ended up running 10 miles together at a comfortably hard pace – at least for me. She was probably just jogging.