Today I ran some Pre-Turtle miles with Leigh, who is about half my age and at least sixty pounds lighter than I am. She just finished a 24-hour endurance race the previous weekend, so I thought that I would have no problems keeping up with her. It's like lunging a horse before you ride him, right? You wear him out, and then he's docile enough for you to deal with him. Keep in mind that this is only a theory. I used to own a horse, and lunging never stopped that evil son-of-a-bitch from trying to scrape me off under every tree on our property.
 |
| This is EXACTLY how my horse looked. The fire made it very painful to ride him. |
Ahem. Anyway.
Leigh's idea of "taking it easy" was a nine minute mile. Then she casually turned to me and said, "So, how's it going lately?"
I gasped and sputtered a reply until I realized that IT SHOULDN'T BE THIS HARD!!! "Leigh, I'm like your mom or something; you've got to SLOW DOWN or I'll have a heart attack." She obliged, and we settled on a 9:30/mile, but my body wasn't happy about it. Luckily for me, poor Leigh wasn't feeling very well, so at mile 3.5 she said she was turning around and walking, and I could keep going to the turnaround and catch up to her on the way back. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that I could run my 9:50/mile and no young whippersnapper would be pushing my ass on the path. I turned around at 4.5 miles and caught up to her about two miles from the end, at which point, thoroughly rested(Leigh), we started the same crazy pace as before.
I am thankful to have survived.
So, now I am trying to figure out my pace goal for the Medina Half Marathon on May 25th. My pace for Akron was 10:22/mile, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'm pretty sure I can do better. I think I can happily maintain a 10:00/mile for 13.1. If so, I hope that my summer speed training will help me to take at least fifteen seconds/mile off that time for the Akron Half Marathon in September.
Then I will race Leigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment