running log - 1/14/06

10 miles with darrin and donnie

my slight nervousness concerning this run was not being helped as i lay in bed friday nite listening to the rain/snow mixture pour down and the wind blasting against the side of the house. i was relieved to awake to bright sunshine and 32 degrees. the northwesterly wind had calmed down a little, but was still blowing 15-20mph with gusts to 30mph according to the weather channel.

another friend of ours, donnie, was to join us today for part of our run. he is a much more accomplished runner than either darrin or i, but he said he wanted to get in a slow 6 miles or so as a precursor to the 13 he would run the next day. our 10-minute pace would suffice him nicely. after some bran flakes and a piece of toast with peanut butter, i went to darrin's house a few minutes after nine. after waiting 20 minutes or so for him to get ready, we left, picked up donnie, and dropped some water at the 4-mile and 7-mile points of our course. we drove back to darrin's house and took off. the first three miles were pretty much directly into the wind. thank goodness i had on a hat and gloves, but my face was still pretty numb. i felt fine during these flat miles and we covered them in about a 9:30 pace. mile 4 has a gradual uphill, then a steep downhill which leads to our first water stop where i also had a GU and a thermotab. i felt great during the next couple of miles, which took us back to state line road, where donnie turned north to go back home, and darrin and i turned south to finish our route. i hadn't run with donnie before and it was nice having a third person in the group. as a plus, he wasn't overly chatty. i'm not an especially social runner. i don't really talk all that much, but a comment here and there is fun. both donnie and darrin seem to feel the same way. heh.

the beginning of mile seven has the first of the two big climbs of the day. ok, shorten stride, breathe normally. i went up it and felt good. darrin opened up 10 yards or so on me by the top of the hill, but made that back up in the next half mile or so. at the seven mile mark we had our second stop for water, another GU and a thermotab. we were off after a quick break. when i resumed running i felt a little soreness in my right hamstring, but this quickly went away. mile 8 takes us behind an I-70 weigh station on a wonderful newly paved flat road. mile 9 has a rolling hill and i was beginning to tire at this point. nothing serious, but my quads were starting to complain. mile 10 has the second big climb of the day, and of course by this time we were headed back into the wind. i shortened my stride again, and got up it fairly well. i was tired by the time i reached the top and was glad i only had a couple hundred yards left. darrin opened up a gap on me again here and ended up beating me by about 30 seconds.

my final time for 10.3 miles was 1:43:55. that's a 10:07 pace. this includes the 4 minutes or so that we spent at the two water stops. those were the only times i stopped or walked. my times for runs are always the total time it takes to complete the distance - breaks, potty stops, whatever, included. my legs felt great the rest of the day and that thingy on the bottom of my foot didn't bother me at all. overall, i'm happy with the effort.