Oxygen Deprived

Tuesday morning I woke up late for my training run in the garden. I'm not sure why but I don't seem to be hearing my alarm clock lately. Regardless, I was determined not to miss this run so I quickly put on my running clothes, gathered my stuff and ran out the door. Initially, I felt a bit stressed as it's a good half hour drive (at this point I had 20 minutes) and with the stop lights and the surprising amount of traffic already out and about it could take even longer. But then I realized, who cares if I'm late? I will still get a good run in (it’s a gorgeous morning) and I'll still get credit for the run (they take attendance and you get free stuff for making so many of the runs). And then I had a great idea, what if I used this as an opportunity for a speed workout by trying to catch my group. Well, now I was totally excited about getting a good speed workout and completely at ease with being late.

When I arrived at the entrance to the park I noticed my group already heading down the road. I continued up to the parking lot where we all meet, proceeded to put on my heart rate monitor and my garmin and then decided to stretch while my garmin was trying to acquire a gps signal. This seemed to take forever as I'm realizing that my group is at least 3 to 5 minutes ahead of me now. Finally, my garmin finished acquiring its signal and off I went...

My mile splits for the run turned out like this: 8:31, 9:04, 9:01, 9:33 and 9:36 (.93 mi)

Assuming that my group was probably running their normal route I just continued to press on. I tried to get a glimpse of them here or there as I could occasionally see a turn in the road up ahead or the road would crest over a hill in the distance. I might have spotted them once but it was hard to tell from so far away, also, it could have been one of the faster groups which gave me a little hope. As I made my way down towards the trading post I saw my friend Dean (who is normally at the front of our group ripping up the hills). He said he had just been hanging towards the back of the group today taking it easy and had needed to make a pit stop. I said I arrived late and was getting in a good speed workout while trying to catch up to the group. He was also up for the challenge so away we went. Our group has really improved since these training runs started so I know they’re also holding a pretty good pace. But with the pace we were doing, plus the fact that the group circles back at the top of each hill to pick up anyone that might have been dropped; I really thought we'd eventually see them. I did become less optimistic though as the run went on but I was getting a killer speed workout in on these hills. Then, as we approached the last hill before getting back to the parking lot Dean (who had been slowly pulling away from me at this point) shouted "there they are!" So, we continued to run strong, catching them on the last major hill.

Afterwards I was telling leader of our group that we had caught up to them and he stated that he has tried this very same thing in years past but with no success. This was also encouraging as it's not an easy thing to do. What might have been our saving grace was that before the trading post the group had ran down a little bit further to balanced rock and back, not that far really but it definitely would have added a couple of minutes which then could have helped us to catch them on that last hill. I was very pleased with some of the paces I was able to hold and it was a great run, hard, but great nonetheless.

I was definitely much more successful at playing catch up during this run that I have been with my blogging this week.