So this weekend Red and I ran our 16 mile course again downtown and it went so much better than the first time!! There were a few things in our favor this time, first we had a lot more water, second it was about 20 degrees cooler, and we started earlier in the day. We bought another Osprey Raptor 10 so that we could each carry 3L of water plus our electrolyte drink of choice. I tried my new Nuun tablets that were Lemon lime, they weren't bad but I think that I decidedly like the GU Brew tabs better. I'm glad that the tabs aren't too bad though because I have 4 tubes of Nuun tabs and a tube of GU Brew. I have different flavors of Nuun so we'll see what the other flavors are like and declare a real winner later. The best part about the run though was probably the fact that I figured out how to make the pack fit my back better so that the vent netting didn't grate my back to death like it did last week. This past run was wonderful and felt so much better than the previous week! This Saturday we're going to aim for 18 miles, we'll see what happens. I think the weather is supposed to be nice and we will be starting sooner because we have to run to Bellefontaine afterwards for wedding stuff. Since I worked all weekend and Monday night I slept a lot Sunday, Monday, and today which meant no real working out since the long run on Saturday. Though tonight I made an amazing discovery, and it's really through a series of events that I was able to make this discovery.
I found this cool running group called Mojo Running. The running store is about 5-10 minutes from my house and the people there are phenomenal. A couple of nurses I work with highly recommended this running group so I was thinking about trying out the group and seeing what their workouts would be like but I had originally planned on Red coming with me. He is away for the week for work so I was going to have to try out this running group on my own. I originally wasn't going to go because I can be surprisingly shy when it comes to trying something new, plus I didn't want to suck and be super slow since I was going to do their speed workout. I figured if Red went with me then I would at least have someone there that I knew so even if I wasn't very good I would have at least one person being nice. Well I was dead wrong, I went mostly because Red wasn't here and I didn't want to sit in the house by myself. I am also frustrated because I haven't heard anything from med schools about if I get to go or not and it's getting rather late in the decision process, add in the rave reviews from some of my nursing friends and that gives you the perfect storm for me trying something new. The speed workout was great, the people were super nice, and it did exactly what I needed it to! I showed up, didn't know a soul, and was immediately welcomed into their group. One guy kind of made me his project sort of and made sure I knew where we were running to and didn't get lost. I ran with him to the area that we were going to do 12 x 400 "5k paced" runs. I put the quotes up because I have never, and probably will never, run a 5k with my average pace being a 6:15 mile. More on that in a minute. I ran with this guy who is probably 6'3" the mile to our starting spot and thought I was dead. He was really really nice and talked the whole way over and was trying to introduce me to people, but the flaw in his plan is that he runs 7 minute miles for fun, that's his "happy pace". Mine is at least 2 minutes slower than that! I didn't start my garmin because he had me out the door and on our way before I could even think about starting my watch, but judging from my breathing and how I felt I know that we were hanging out around 8 minute miles or less. It was only a mile to the starting area but it went rather quickly. Once we were there though there turned out to be about 15 or so of us that wanted to do the speed work for the evening so fortunately I had a decent amount of people to fit somewhere in the middle. The guy that I ran over with DEMOLISHED everyone else while he was getting beat by his 46 year old friend. Yeah, the two guys "pacing" the group were both over 40 and schooled the rest of us. Yeesh. The coach told us to run 12 quarter mile repeats at slightly faster than our 5k pace. That means that if you run say a 27 minute 5K then you run about a 9 minute mile so theoretically it should take you a little over 2 minutes to run 400yds. I was no where near that pace. My first 6 laps were around a 7 minute mile or so pace, then I found a girl that had been kind of pushing me, and I had been pushing her, and we began to openly push each other. With that open friendly push we dropped the pace down to a 6:15 pace at one point. Yep. That's crazy. My hamstrings were twitching, my legs were twitching, I thought I was going to puke, but when it was all over I felt great!
After our 3 miles of sprints we jogged back to the store to just hang out and go home. I ended up running back with the same guy plus a couple other guys and was almost positive they were going to leave me in the dust, but instead they did not. I had a blast trying something new and loving it. I don't suck at speed work like I thought I would. I thought that I had lost a lot of my speed since I haven't been playing soccer but apparently it's still hanging out in there somewhere. I totally intend on going back! Next Tuesday I don't get to go back because I have to work, but after that I will definitely go back!! I heard rumor of a potential tri portion of their little club and I am incredibly curious as to when they do biking and swimming work outs! I wonder if they come out after the Pig is over or what, but either way I'm excited! Now it's time for bed! I've worked the last three nights so my body thinks it's supposed to still be awake when it really is supposed to be sleeping right now. I'll see if I can't fix that!
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