Humidity Training Run

This morning, I met Amy at 6:30 for our jaunt around the Longhorn Dam Loop. Weather was warm and humid. There were a couple others who were considering joining us, but they failed to arrive...alas, we would be left to fend for ourselves.

Amy and I have run together quite a bit during the weekly speedwork sessions, but never for a longer run. This was fun to have an hour and a half or so to chat and laugh about stuff as we slogged around the Hike and Bike Trail. As usual, anything discussed on the run stays on the run, but we had the usual mix of psychological insight and outright hilarity. I think neither of us was willing to say "slow down," so we kept up a nice pace the whole day. My GPS locked up in the parking lot of RunTex, so only the overall time is available, but it looks like the splits along the way were pretty consistent (I had to resort to the "Old School" method of just using a regular running watch. Go figure). We took a few very short water stops (I didn't carry water today, so we used the trailside water fountains), including a one minute stop at the Rock for really cold water that I drank and also poured over my head. I was getting overheated a little in the conditions of the day.

We saw the Gazelles marathon people coming on the trail in the opposite direction a little more than halfway through our run, so it was fun to see them while we were toiling. For the last couple of miles from the Rock, we pushed the pace a little, including an 8:33 last mile. Nothing spectacular, but for the whole 10.1 miles, an exact 9:00/mile pace. Well done, I'd say. We did very little talking over that last mile, but ran stride for stride all the way to the finish.

It was a good run. Just like me, Amy is using these summer long runs to build a base for Freescale Marathon training, so I suspect we'll be running together a lot until the start of Freescale workouts. Afterwards, we gathered up our stuff and went to the stretching area at RunTex to be able to cheer on our fellow Gazelles and Gilbert in the News 8K race happening this morning. Gilbert looked comfortable as he flew by in the lead (we were at about the 4 mile mark of the course), and Peter, Paul, Frank, Sean, Dick, Anne and a host of other Gazelles were looking pretty strong as they went by as well. We got a little goofy (well, I did, at least), and sang the Iyo Ngwe song for them as they ran by.

The full stretching was fun, and I needed it today. We had a pretty big crew, including some new folks who started the Gazelles marathon training this morning for fall races. Gilbert showed up about when we were doing the ab/core exercises after the stretching. (I did the whole routine, double sets, and I can tell I've been neglecting those exercises!) It was a nice day at the running office.