progress

Last night, we headed back out to the Bartlett running group. As we walked from Becky's car to the group of runners, a horrible reality hit me: Spunky is hiking in the Grand Canyon this week. Who will run with us? Other thoughts rushed to my mind: Maybe we just won't run the whole 4 miles. What if we get lost? Are we really good enough runners to be out here?

Becky and I, learning from our previous outings, took a moderate pace in the first mile and kept it at 12 minutes. We ran with two other ladies from the MRTC Women's Running program, so we didn't feel too bad about being at the very back. We ran the second mile in about 11:20, and had a short break at the stop light. At the 2 mile mark, the two ladies we were running with opted out of the water break and kept on going. Thankfully, two other ladies were there, and they pledged to stay with us so we would not get lost. Not necessarily planning to do it, we ran the last two miles without any breaks at all. I noted that if races didn't have the course mapped out, and I could only find my way by sticking with the people in front of me, I would probably run much better races. We paced ourselves pretty well on the hilly course, speeding up sometimes and slowing down sometimes to maintain a run. We finished the four miles in 46 minutes, meaning that the first half was 23:20 and the second half was a 22:40. Maybe not impressive to the rest of the group, but that is a negative split, and I am very proud of it! The experience was also much more enjoyable than finishing the course in 46 minutes last week while running and walking. I felt much more accomplishment to have continued on without stopping, even when my mind told me several times to just stop and walk.

So, we made a little more progress. Each day I feel more and more confident about the 10k in October!