Opa!

Monday night was probably our last decent night weather-wise until spring and I definitely took advantage of it by going for a run. Originally I'd thought about doing 8 miles but since it was also my running club's "run of the month" I wanted to get done in time to change and make it to the restaurant without having to rush too much.

So I ran 5.5 miles and for much of it I was hanging with the 3:30 marathon crowd.

Impressive, right? Well, they WERE recovering from racing so they were taking it easy while I was pushing it. However, I was still able to carry on a conversation while running negative splits for the first 4 miles. The conversations mostly revolved around our various marathons, upcoming races, future plans, and who was running the half marathon on Halloween. I took it nice and easy on the last 1.5 miles although I could have pushed harder.

I admit, I thought about running the Monster Dash half marathon on Sunday. I really did. But, as I told Maribeth, I'm SO CLOSE to breaking two hours in a half marathon that I'd be afraid of being mad at myself if I went out there and missed it again. I think I'd rather focus on keeping my speed over the winter and making a spring half marathon my goal race.

After our run a group of us went to the local Greek restaurant where we chatted about skiing (both downhill and cross country), duathlons and triathlons.

All in all it was another great night with the running club. I didn't even mind that I didn't get home until almost 10 PM. I'd had a crazy day at work and was totally frazzled when I got home but the run followed by dinner relaxed and refreshed me. Amazing what a good run and good company can do.

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Note: Just ignore that strange extra line there. I accidentally turned the Garmin back on when I got home. Oops.

Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 628 ft Location: -- Elev. Gain: -10 ft Date: 10/25/10 Up/Downhill: [+22/-32] Time: 06:34 PM Difficulty: 2.1 / 5.0 Performance Distance: 5.48 miles Time: 0:52:02 Speed: 6.3 mph Pace: 9' 30 /mi Calories: 644 Map   Elevation (ft)   Pace (min/mile)   Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Elevation Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 9' 31 +0' 01 6.3 -0.0 0 ft 2 9' 22 -0' 08 6.4 +0.1 -9 ft 3 9' 02 -0' 28 6.6 +0.3 +3 ft 4 8' 55 -0' 35 6.7 +0.4 +7 ft 5 10' 00 +0' 30 6.0 -0.3 0 ft end 10' 49 +1' 19 5.5 -0.8 +3 ft Versus average of 9' 30 min/mile

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