Oxygen Deprived

I really need to start bringing my camera so I can take a picture or two and share the beauty of these early morning training runs in Garden of the Gods. It can be pretty incredible, especially now that its getting lighter and warmer a little bit earlier each day.

Our group did around 5 miles out to the trading post and back. A buddy and I split off from the pack at about 4.5 miles and continued back the way we started putting us at a little over 6 miles for the run. Some of the hills are tremendous and I actually thought at one point my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. I mapped the run using gmap but for some reason the elevation portion won't display properly, the route is accessible though.

This was the 8th of out 20 training runs before the Garden of the Gods 10 Miler on June 11th. I think it was my 5th training session as I've missed several for different reasons... The first because my back had gone out the day before, which happened to be my birthday... ouch! The second was because I wimped out on a morning which was extremely cold and windy and the third because I didn't jump right out of bed when my alarm went off and I apparently fell back asleep making me miss the coldest morning yet. Maybe that last one was for the best.

It's good to actually see some improvement on the hills and in my pace. When starting these training runs my pace would drop significantly on the hills but now I'm able to maintain my pace for the most part and even accelerate a bit on some of them. I can't imagine running this race without ever going for any of these training runs, for me personally that would equate to a pretty bad experience on race day.

The overall pace for the run came in at around a 10 min/mile which is what I'm hoping to do on race day. This might be a bit ambitious given my running background but I definitely think it's a possibility. Besides, I have to have something to shoot for right?