Running With Jack

Last night was a cool, windy, almost blustery 25C/77F as I headed out at 5:30 p.m. to run with the Graben Running Club. I ran the 4K/2.5M to the meeting point at a nice easy warm-up pace, around 5:45/K (9:15/M).

I was one of the first to arrive and as I waited I started wondering if I was going to be running alone (the other two there were from the fast group). But in the last 7-8 minutes the small parking lot filled and there ended up being more people than usual (around 40). I fell in with the normal group that I run with, but one said he wanted to run the 11K/7M faster with a couple other dudes, so I decided to join them.

The four of us took off, or more correctly stated, the three of them took off and I fought to keep up with them. They quickly reached my 10K race pace, then faster, by the second kilometer I knew I was running with the wrong crowd, but did my best to hang with them. By the 4th kilometer I could feel the first side stitches and just as I was about to bid my adieu, the fastest rabbit pulled over for a pit stop. The other two slowed down slightly and I managed to stay with them another 10 minutes. Finally after about 7K/4.5M I decided that I would do more harm than good if I kept the pace up, so I bailed out and fell behind. I managed to keep the small group in site and noticed a few minutes later that another one dropped out as well. I concentrated on trying to catch him, but was still 10 paces behind him as we finished. I traversed the 11K/7M with an average pace of 5:01/K (8:04/M). Considering that I also ran a 14K/8.7M speed run on Monday this is pretty good for me.

After chatting with some of the club members for a few minutes, I started feeling a chill from the wind, so ran the 4K/2.5M back to the house (23 minutes).

This morning I definitely felt the workout in my legs – sore and stiff, a good reminder that I’m not getting any younger :-) Tonight I’m heading to the pool for some laps. This weekend I want to run another back-to-back long run, probably the same 20K/12.5M on Friday night and around 30K/18.6M hilly run on Saturday morning that I did last week. We’ll see how the legs feel on Friday.