Loving Running Buddies

Last night I messaged a girl from my running club who lives nearby to see if she might want to join me for 4 miles this morning. She did! Another friend of hers (who also lives nearby) had already asked her to run, so the three of us ran together. There's a short cut that goes between our neighborhoods, so we met there and ran an easy route that I often do from my house. I ended up running 5.5 miles by the time I was back home (could/would have been more but I decided to walk the 3/4-1 mile from my house to our meeting spot). I wouldn't have gotten out of bed to run if not for meeting these girls, but the warm up walk still did me some good. I didn't stop my watch for any street crossings or our stop at McDonald's to refill water bottles and we did some run/walk intervals , so the pace was a little slower. My total time was 1:06:42 with an average pace of 12:07. I'm usually not so consistent with pace but miles 2, 3, and 4 were 12:06, 12:07, and 12:06.

My total weekly mileage was 21.1 which is far more than I've run in a couple of months. My pace is slower than my plan calls for when I run with the groups, but it's so much more comfortable and it helps me enjoy the runs... which in the long run (ha) will make me happier than a sub-2 half. Which will still happen sometime this fall/winter. I look back at my times from cooler weather and I frequently hit the times I need to be getting now. I'm going to follow this plan for the next 10 weeks with some modifications as I need to make them, and maybe by the time I run my September 1/2 I can pick up the plan again and work harder at hitting the prescribed paces since it'll start to be cooler outside.