Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Runnin' long

Saturday's workout started out with just an hour on the trainer - but the starting hour happened to be 6:00 a.m. I can't say that I enjoy getting up that early on the weekends, but I love completing my long weekend workout before 10:15 a.m. Anyway, Mark was relatively good to us for the hour ride. However, he, like Ed, can be quite mean to us during our hour-long weekday rides (see Shawn's blog for confirmation of the meanness). Apparently, they want to get us in shape or something. It's kind of fun to start early - and then watch the 7:00 a.m. riders trickle in. We get to greet each victim - and catch up with them as they set-up their trainers, fill up water bottles, etc.
I was a little stressed about the 16-mile run to follow. Generally, I'm not too intimidated by long distances, but I was concerned about how my foot would feel half-way into the run. I really didn't want to be hobbling home from the other side of the river. However, I did notice that three of my training partners were all talking about one ailment or another (Mark - back, Rick - back, Jeff - knees/back). I figured I wouldn't be alone in my pain. Shelly designed an excellent course for us that involved heading through U of R, over the bridge, down Riverside Drive, over the Nickel Bridge, down into the Fan ("just 10 blocks to Vine Street"), and then back to Maramarc. We kept a relaxed pace for most of the run. I'm pretty sure that we do solve most of the world's problems on our runs. We also have a lovely time critiquing the different paint and landscaping choices of the houses we run by. Westover Hills remains one of the cutest neighborhoods I have ever seen. My foot did start to ache about half-way through the run, but I was able to work through it. It seems to be healing a bit. I'm going to take one more week off from weekday runs. Hopefully, by next week, I can incorporate at least one weekday run back into the schedule.
We did pick up the pace a bit as we approached the Malvern/Monument intersection. We knew we only had about a mile to go. What a feeling!
In case you're counting, 3 months 'til Boston, 4 months 'til Brazil....

3 comments:

margo said...

seriously - can we have a running mini-clinic? i need some of your mojo.

Anonymous said...

margo - only if sq shares some of her running mojo on me, too!

sq you are rocking it sister.

Cyndi said...

Hold on gals -- I want some!! We will have to sort out some type of custody arrangement so that I can get in on some of this speedy-mc-speedster mojo, too!! How about you guys can have it in the Spring and Fall and I get it all summer? ;) Oh, SQ, you can have it back in the Winter.

C