Running well in the grass

I ran a little bit too long on Thursday with 3 J's (Jake, Jordan, Jimmy), aiming for only an hour but ending up running 80min, for probably 11-12 miles. That gave me enough reason to slice off 20min off my Friday run, going for 40min on my neighborhood loop, probably about 6mi since I picked the pace up a little for the last 20min.

Saturday AM was another XC workout with the team at the cell phone tower fields. Larger group this time, and I had a larger B-group contingent to work with this time (Dave, Jason, Jimmy and newcomer Will). The workout was 8x1km w/ 2:30 recovery jog. The idea was to cut down pace by 5sec every 2 intervals, but after we went out in 2:58 (4:46 mile pace, huh) for the first kilometer, that cutdown probably wasn't going to happen. And it didn't! But the good thing was that we stayed consistent. Dave and Jason gained 3-5sec on me for each interval, but that's the good news! I set a goal to keep Jason within 5 seconds, and I did just that. Our paces stayed even, 2:58, 2:56, 2:55, 2:56, 3:00, 3:02, 2:57 for the kilometers. It was a little slippery out there and we nearly bit it a couple times, but it was good practice without spikes.

So this would surpass Wednesday's track workout as my best workout yet of this current run build. I don't think I've ever been able to hold a sub-5 pace for 8km of a workout, so that was pretty neat to do! And that it was on rolling grass/dirt terrain was even more constructive.

Will run shorter than planned tomorrow because of an early-week track workout planned for Monday. I also need to watch my homedawg Michelle try to qualify for the trials in Philly and Ryan take on Ironman AZ tomorrow. Less running, more time to track them.