Ran 5 miles to work yesterday. I ran slow, remembering the advice from the training plan I’m following:
“Easy runs mean totally comfortable and controlled. If you’re running with someone else, you should be able to converse easily. You’ll likely feel as if you could go faster.”
So I took it very easy, and when I got to where I normally stop, at SW 1st and Madison, I just kept going. I still had lots of energy left. I finally stopped at SW 4th and Taylor, after going flat-out for a couple of blocks, but I could have continued even further.
I’ve estimated my normal route and distance at about 5 miles so I guessed I’d gone 5.5 miles, since I’d ran five or six blocks further than normal, but on Friday I sat down with some mapping software (Microsoft’s Streets 98, the only one I could find; Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps aren’t well-suited to figuring out distances on routes like that) and found that the total distance was only 5.24 miles. Oh, well, I’m not that disappointed. That gives me 13.24 miles for the week.
I did time myself, and my pace for the run was still under 10 minutes. In fact it was 9:56.507 (total time 52:05.7 for 5.24 miles).
Tomorrow I’m going to run… Oh, crap! I just checked my schedule and I’m supposed to run today! 4 miles with 3 “gentle pickups”. I thought that was for tomorrow… drat. I’ll have to do it tomorrow. It’ll be better for me to do it tomorrow. (Am I convincing myself yet?)
I’m looking at the schedule for next week and there are no “AI” days — Aerobic Intervals. It’s the only week without them. Is that a typo? I’ll have to compare it to the one printed in the magazine to double-check. Next post will be my schedule for next week.