And so it begins

It's only 9:15 a.m. and I feel like I've had a full day already. When the alarm went off at 5:50 a.m., I was having a dream ... about the alarm going off. Don't you hate those? Anyway, I quickly relieved myself, put on my running clothes, grabbed a granola bar and some water and headed over to Riverside Runners for the first workout of the speed and endurance training group.

Our warmup was probably about a half mile total, including a slow quarter mile then some easy, short hill repeats to get everything moving. The run itself was 6 miles with 10 minutes slower, 3 hard, 7 slow, 3 hard, 7 slow, 3 hard, then a relatively medium pace for the remaining distance. Click here for the actual course (you'll have to forgive me on my mapping skills since this is the first time I've used the mapmyrun site).

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give this workout about a 7. My overall time was just over 50 minutes. During the faster runs I was hitting about a 7:30 mile pace. (One day I'll blog about how great it is to have a Garmin Forerunner watch.) I fortunately hit two of those faster times on a downhill; the third started going up a hill, but the second half was downhill. Considering I started this run earlier than I'm used to, and got up an hour earlier than usual, this is a pretty good kickoff to the rest of the summer. And being one of the slowest in the group only motivates me to run harder. (I could also go on and on about this horrid humidity we've been having lately...)

On a side note, thanks to those who have left comments or sent separate emails to me. It's nice to have a few readers out there! Feel free to leave any questions or comments for me. Don't forget that comments can be anonymous. And if you read my blog and have a blog yourself, let me know and I'll add a link on my page.