The run this morning was a five miler. Long, but I have done this before so knew I was up to the challenge. I ran with my friend and neighbor Debby for a few miles, until she decided to slow up while I pulled ahead. It was nice to catch up with her since we rarely see each other outside of the summer pool season. The run was very flat other than a few small hills – a slow downhill course. Of course, what goes down eventually comes back to haunt you as an uphill run. We ran on a path through an elementary school, then back through a series of other neighborhoods. It seemed strange since a good bit of today’s run was the reverse of the route that we have been running.<\/p>\n
The final hill was a killer. On the two-mile Saturday run a month ago, I walked most of the hill. Today, although at a slow pace, I ran the entire thing. Before the hill, I was running about the same pace as a fellow runner, Jennifer, so we decided to run together for the last mile and a half or so. We kept each other running – just like with Melissa last week. I really wanted to walk up the last hill, but knew if I started to walk I would not be able to restart. So, I kept running.<\/p>\n
I actually felt good about 30 seconds beyond the top of the hill, so picked the pace back up to sprint the last couple of hundred yards. Jennifer and I finished strong, keeping with each other pace for pace. I really like having someone to run with that matches my pace on a given day – it keeps me going at a steady pace which I believe is the key to a successful run. We finished in 52:30 – a 1:05 pace for the 10K. Without hills, perhaps sub 1-hour, my goal.<\/p>\n
This week, we have 3 1\/2 miles on Monday and 5 1\/2 miles on Wednesday. Monday will be a treadmill run and Wednesday, I will meet up with the team for the longest run yet. We have just three long runs left. 5 1\/2 on Wednesday, 6 on Saturday, then the 10K (6.2 miles) on the 31st.<\/p>\n
At this point, I’m feeling ready for the 10K – feeling strong and capable for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The run this morning was a five miler. Long, but I have done this before so knew I was up to the challenge. I ran with my friend and neighbor Debby for a few miles, until she decided to slow up while I pulled ahead. It was nice to catch up with her since we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,34,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monument-avenue-10k","category-running","category-ymca"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39P1R-31","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}