Blast Off!

Well, actually the lift off started on Saturday. I had an opportunity to run with the Totally Running Group on Saturday morning. The scheduled run on the docket was 13 miles.

This group was running 11 at 7AM. I decided to head over the big Creek Greenway as Sarah headed to Lake Lanier to ride with Stacey, Josephina, Raquel and Susan. They wanted to get familiar with the bike course in preparation for next Sunday’s Iron Girl race.

I made my way over to the Greenway early to get in 2 miles prior to the 11-mile start.
The parking lot had only 6 cars at 6:30AM. The sun was breaking through the trees and each minute that went by you could feel the temperature increasing.

I headed down the trail, which is marked every tenth of a mile. The first 2 tenths both Achilles’ were tight. I kept the pace at a crawl knowing that it would take a few minutes to loosen up.

Almost instantly from the get go the sweat started to pour and I could feel the legs warming up. I maintained an 8:20 pace for the first mile and on the way back picked it up a few a 8 minute pace.

Arriving back at the parking lot the amount of cars had doubled with a few more pulling in every couple of minutes.

I noticed a small group of runners gathering about 20 feet from the entrance to the trail. I went over to the Jeep to retrieve my water bottle and made my way to the group.
The group was a mix of women and men totaling 9 runners. Collin was the organizer of the run and told everyone that this weeks run was 11 miles. I asked the pace and he said we will see how many run and then decide.

Ironically, the women broke off into one pack as I heard a few state that Collin is going to be running fast, as the men of 4 moved off towards Collin.

We headed out about 7:04AM at a quick but manageable pace. As we hit the first mile mark the pace increased fast and one of the runners started to fade as we made our way down the path. About mile 3.5 I asked what pace we were trying to hold, that is when Collin looked at his watch and stated we are averaging 7:05’s currently.

I rolled my eyes as I heard the voices of all my cohorts in crime say, “Too fast Corey!” as I had done many times in the past to them.

The legs felt okay, not great, the breathing was fine, I did not feel overworked so I settled in behind Collin’s left shoulder and held pace while I mimicked his stride. By mile 4 another runner had dropped off and it was Collin, Brandon and myself as we hit the hill (not really a hill as it is an incline) up to the intersection of HWY 9.

This is where Collin stated we would be dialing it back to a sub 8 pace for the remainder. Sub 8? Good that will even my average out to the pace I needed to accomplish today.

The rest of the run out and heading back was me just focusing on my form, gait and breathing. We talked about races and Boston. Both runners thought I was in my mid 30’s on the posting time for Boston in April. I had to correct them that I was 10 years older than them as they both jerked their necks to get another look at grampa keeping stride with them.

As we neared the 1 mile marker and the end of the run I looked at my stopwatch and had over 9 minutes left on my total goal time. I told Collin that I was easing off and taking the last mile as a warm down even though we were all soaked to the bone with sweat from the amount of humidity.

When arrived at the end of the trail I hit the watch and was 53 seconds faster than the goal time. In a sense, I was even faster because the run ended up being 13.3 miles. The average pace for the 13.3 miles was…Uh, I think I better not say so I don’t get yelled at.
At the end, we chatted for a few more and I made a tentative commitment to run the length of the trail 13+ miles next Saturday.

The rest of the weekend was great. I mowed the lawn on Saturday, made Buffalo Wraps for dinner and we watched Sherlock Holmes. Sarah and Ellie went to Alpine Bakery and picked up a plate full of Italian pastries. We ended up gorging ourselves on awesome pastries that night.

Sunday was a relaxing day. I started the construction on a Piñata` Dragon from scratch. A lot of paper ripping and Paper Mache` mixing. I finally finished the last of the application of Paper Mache` 7 hours later, but not all the time was spent on the Dragon.
Ellie and I went to the pool to swim while Sarah went grocery shopping and Grace hung out with a friend. Sarah met up at the pool around 4:30PM as we hung out for another hour.

Father’s Day dinner was a Rib-Eye as big as your face, potatoes, salad and a bottle of wine. Now that is a good end to a great weekend.

This morning was the start of speed again. It has been 68 days from the last speed workout I had accomplished. I knew this was not going to be pretty but had to do my best.

All I am going to say about the speed workout is that I made the distance I had to run. The pace? I need some work on that.