I pulled into the Danvers Y at 5:08 this morning to meet Heidi and Julie who were going to run the first 7 miles of my long run with me today. It was pouring, coming down in buckets. Julie pulls in and few minutes later and it is still pouring. Normally I would have just started running at 5:10, just because I have to get the run done and don’t have time. Since it was raining I was kind of glad that Heidi was a little late. A few minutes later she pulled in and the rain stopped, sort of, it wasn’t pouring anymore at least.
We head out on the run and I can tell right away that the pace is faster than normal. I figure I will let them set the pace and just keep up. I can tell after the first mile that we went out too fast for Julie. How do I know? She stopped talking! Unfortunately for her, that would be our slowest mile. We stayed together through the first 4.5 miles and then came the hill on 62 and Julie was dropped like a bad habit! Heidi had no problem keeping up and probably could have pushed harder. After the 7 mile loop I was off on my own for another 5, and it started raining again, pretty much rained for the next 4 miles. I felt pretty good and just relaxed and ran at what I felt was a comfortable pace. I was a little surprised when I looked at my watch and the pace was 7:20 for mile 10, I felt like I was running closer to 8 minute miles. When I finished it turned out that I ran the 12 miles 9 minutes faster this week than I had last week!
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/86409322
Weight: 162.5