Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Funday Monday Recap

I've been running for 2 weeks now with my friend. Saturday was a 4 mile run, so off we went and completed 4 miles. Afterward, I couldn't help but notice that nothing hurt. Not one muscle. When I run by myself, I am usually in pain somewhere (or everywhere) when I am done. I talked to John about it afterward and he suggested that it might be because I am not running fast enough when I am with my friend. And it is true, my pace is about 4 minutes slower when I run with her than when I run alone. So yesterday, when we met up at Creve Couer Lake I suggested that I do the long course and she do the short run. We are still in the early days of training and are only required to run 3 miles, but I've been running more than 3 miles since day 1 program. She would get her 3 miles in and I would get just under 6 miles by going different ways. The plan was I was trying to catch up to her and she was trying to not let me.

So we split off in different directions and I booked it. Well for me anyway. The first 2 miles I was at 10:17 pace, that's like really good for me. I typically stay in the 12 minute a mile pace because I'm slow like that! Miles 3, without even realizing it did slow down to the 12 min pace, when I looked down at my watch, I was like "ouch" and sped back up. I never did get back in the the 10 min pace area but stayed steady at 11:20 for the last 2 miles. I never did catch my friend. She was warm and snug in her car by the time I finished. The good news that came out of it though, is that she only stopped long enough to get a drink at the 2 mile marker and that's it. She basically ran her first 5K. Her pace was almost 15 minutes a mile, but she didn't stop.

We came to the conclusion that I make her run faster than she is ready for, which is why she has to stop at least 3 times when we run together. We are going to try the experiment again on Wednesday and see if she can go faster. My goal is to try and keep my pace steady rather starting out too fast (for me).

Afterward, I headed home to eat dinner (which I did not take a picture of) but it was a recipe that I saw on Run Eat Repeat. I did however take a pic of dessert, which I ate before dinner :)
It's a Chocolate Peanut butter cupcake from Trader Joe's. So so good and I am looking forward to working out hard again tonight, just so I can eat another one of those cupcakes.

have a great day!

2 comments:

TR said...

Pacing yourself and finding that good, yet hard and comfortable spot is so hard!

I love that you're going out running with a friend. No one I'm friends with runs..I'm going to HAVE to convert someone!

Krissy said...

I spent most of the year running by myself, this running with a friend is a new thing, and it started because she decided to challenge herself to train for a half marathon and asked for someone to help keep her accountable. Since I am already running it seemed like a good fit. It's not been bad so far. We will see how it goes as we get further along into the winter months and running outside seems like a not so good idea.