Every Day's A Speed Day

...when you run with people faster than you.

I've started training for the Big Sur half and my goal is to run faster. To achieve that end, I'm dabbling in speed training. My training partner, whom I'll call Bunny, and I run around the track every Tuesday. The track is good, because she's so much faster than I am and this way she doesn't have to wait up. Bunny is also training for Big Sur.

Wednesday is a recovery run and Friday is a tempo run. Today was the first time we actually tried tempo running. We ran with the beginners group for almost 3 miles to warm up, then picked up the pace. Since we were on a trail, I told Bunny to wait for me at the end. We were aiming for 20 minutes of tempo, but only did 14 minutes. But what minutes: average pace was 6.4 mph, with a maximum of 7.6! I was running 11:36 min/mile for the warmup and I thought that was challenging. I guess I'll have to stop referring to myself as a 13 minute miler. :-)

Our long runs are on Sunday, but they are only long and slow for Bunny. Last Sunday we ran 9 miles at 11:49 m/m. Another woman joined us, but she's more Bunny's speed, and they're both so competitive I just let them go. They didn't get too far away, as a courtesy to me, but I need to get people more my speed to run with us.

Last Saturday, SD and I rode 43 miles with the store group. We didn't expect to be riding that far, but we were following the leader. She was gauging how we looked; unfortunately she didn't know I had a nine mile run planned for the next day. Our longest distance before that had been 26 miles, so it was quite a jump in miles and the back of my knees were sore for three days! SD got a flat tire--his rear tire--so now he knows what to do. The store owner helped him fix it. Hopefully, he'll be around in case I ever get a flat, since they were on the freeway when it happened and I was waiting at the exit. Anyway, it's nice to know I can ride that far. SD and I are going to sign up for a 50 mile ride, which occurs in October.

I haven't been keeping current on my blog or reading yours. Sorry. No excuses, I just haven't been able to keep up. But there are a few races that deserve a shout out. First, AmyBee and Nat competed in their first half-Ironman on August 17! You can read Amy's race report here.

And Donald recently ran his first 100 mile endurance race! He wrote a fabulous race report.

AmyBee has a triathlon coming up this weekend, and Donald is competing in a half-Ironman, also this weekend. Good luck to them and all of you who are racing this weekend.