I gave myself a fairly long recovery time from yesterday's lunchtime run, so I was prepared to run whatever pace was needed today for the LVRR Group Run. It was a few minutes after 6 PM and no one had shown up yet to run. I was beginning to think I'd be running alone (in which case I'd do a fartlek).
Just before I was about to start one of the regulars, Jeff, appeared. Another woman Karen showed up as well. It wasn't a big group, but I was happy to see a few people devoted anyway. Heck, we aren't getting that many more people when it is cool out.
It was very hot, but luckily I got to run a nice and easy pace. Karen and I ran just ahead of Jeff at a little under a 10 minute pace. I felt better this week, so I was much more talkative than last week. We chatted about a lot of things. Karen is actually going to be working one of the Quadzilla water stops. That's good to know. It's early on, so I'll be sure to say hello if I see her.
We started out heading east from the clubhouse and looped around. Jeff still struggles some with hills, so we didn't go all the way to the Fish Hatchery. We crossed over the creek right before that. The hills coming back are actually pretty easy for me now. Karen and I continued to cruise and Jeff fell back a little more. He's definitely getting a lot stronger than when he first ran with us over a month ago. I love to see that.
Karen and I finished up at the Clubhouse. Jeff still wanted to do more, I so I fell back and continued on with him. We did an out and back to the Robin Hood Bridge. The heat was certainly getting the better of him. We finished up with a solid five miles.
It is great running with Jeff. The first time he came out, he dropped off quite a bit and even had to walk some. I stayed with him as much as I could then. I figured he would be discouraged and wouldn't come back. I'm glad to see him becoming more a regular. We still don't have the same people coming out every week, but there have been a couple people that have shown up multiple times in the last five weeks or so. At least we are building a little bit of something. Hopefully the run will grow.
This was good recovery run for me. Even though it was an easy pace, I still sweated a lot. Thankfully, I didn't really have a problem with chafing. Only some minor irritation. I love that they gave us LVRR group leader T-shirts, but they are 35% cotton and quite hot to wear on days like today. I still feel like I should wear it as the group run leader, even though it probably isn't necessary with only two other people.
I would've liked to have done some hill sprints afterward, but I was just too sticky and there weren't any big hills around. I definitely need to start working those into my training as well as drills. I did do about 15 minutes of core work this afternoon with my Pilates tape. It was tough and I didn't want to overdo it. Eventually I will get to the point where I can finish the whole tape and I'm flexible enough to do the difficult stretching exercises.
Tomorrow I plan on going to South Mountain in Emmaus in the morning. It will be hot again, so I want to get there fairly early. I haven't been out there in awhile and I want to get to know that trail a little better. I also want to do more climbing. I might try to push the pace a little too. I've been doing too many five or six mile runs lately. Eventually, I need to get out of that rut and scatter my mileage more.
5 miles - 50:39 (10:08 pace)
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