From one extreme to another

Sunday
07/26/09

Saturday I ran my long...muddy...wet...trail run of over 10 miles in an overcast like condition. Upon return the first thing one must do is wash the running shoes and legs. Sunday I ran with Mrs. pathfinder as an easy run.

She is training for the Beach to Beacon 10K and the plan I laid out for her very first race ever was a walk/run combo to guarantee a finish. You see she has never run before and this is probably a pretty tough race to do as a first one.

Anyway, we hit the road for a planned 4 mile walk/run at a combined pace of 13+ minutes or so. Mostly tar, with humid sunny conditions, at this effort was quite a contrast to Saturdays trail run...to say the least.

We got talking during the first mile of the run and she mentioned she had hoped by now she would have progressed enough to run the whole 10K. Well, we would have had to adjust the training before now to gear up for that and honestly until the last 2-3 weeks she hasn't pushed the running too much.

I decided to see if she had a steady run in her and offered to pace her in a 5K distance with out walking to see how she would do. We would run a 5K loop from our house with a fair amount of uphill and about 1 mile of dirt roads.

She took the bait and we ran the whole distance. The pace averaged out to about 12:40 pace which was quite a bit faster than we were training the walk run. I was impressed with her detirmination and the fact that she did have the running base to pull off a 5k. I also reminded her that there was nothing wrong with a walk/run pace and if she got tired to switch back to that.

She was quite happy (and tired) when we finished. I told her to put a little extra effort in her stretches after running that distance. Her response was suprising, she wanted to run again on Monday.

07/27/09
Monday

The air was hot heavy and sticky today at work and I seriously doubted that the Mrs was going to be up for a run. I assumed I would get home to hear her complain about the stiffness in her legs, the hot humid temps and opt for either a walk/run or no run at all.

The suprise was on me as she immediately hit me up when I got home. She asked if I still wanted to run with her. Wow......I agreed but decided we should shorten the distance a bit to be sure she didn't push too hard.

We ran a 2.5 mile loop at a much faster 12:04 pace and she did extremely well. I congratulated her and we went for a cooldown swim after. I told her that this doesn't neccesarily mean she will be able to run the whole 10K, but if she starts this way, stops at each water stop to drink, there is a good chance she might pull it off.

I am suprised how much I enjoyed this very easy pace, it gave us a chance to talk without the normal interruptions. I figure this type of running works very well for me and gives me a fun running partner on rest days.

Sunday 3.1 miles @40:29(12:40 pace)
Monday 2.5 miles @30:09(12:04 pace)