great memories...

Tuesday evening:

After a much needed day of rest from exercising Monday I was ready to get back to my last couple weeks of strong Indy Mini training. I switched up my speed workout days and type of speed work I was going to do tonight to help give me a boost in the final training phase. So I decided to head out to our friends shop in Arlington Heights for the 6pm group run that they have hosted out of Runners High n’ Tri for years. To be honest I haven’t run this group run since May 1995…that’s a long, very long time ago! It’s alittle over a 5 mile run which was going to fit my scheduled 55 minute tempo run perfectly so I made a minor adjustment to run the distance and decided to push the pace of the run the whole distance instead of tempo’ing it.

My friend Ben was there as a few more of my running friends that I know from our region. I ran an ez 7/10ths of a mile before the group set off on the "official" run promptly at 6pm as I kept the Garmin going. So right from the get-go I was running quick paced run attempting to stay with Ben but his running abilities are far quicker than mine so I managed my own pace as best to my current running abilities. I threw in a couple of surges throughout the run distance as I pushed it all the way back to the storefront…my complete run time was 45:15 for a total distance was 5.9 miles which includes the short ez warm-up jog. So that gives me an average mile pace of 7:40 with an average HR of 139bpm with a peak HR at the very end of 151bpm.

Afterwards I hung around the store to chat with friends I haven’t seen in sometime and realized how much I used to really enjoy this run back in the "old" days. It was a fantastic speed work alternative to mix-up the training schedule which brought a big smile to my face :-)

When I got home I shower, ate some proper food, hydrated and immediately past out on the sofa watching TV…pure exhaustion in a great way!

b