Only the Lonely...

Who knew the middle of the pack could be such a lonely place?? At the encouragement of Coach Crazylegs, I've been pushing the pace of my long runs a bit. To fully grasp the pain-inducing effect of this endeavor, I should probably be honest and admit that my old Running Partner and I used to run at about a 10:15 pace. Sometimes we even hit 10:30. Amazing, eh? We were blurry streaks, I tell ya. Now, before you get all high and mighty with your speedy selves and look down on our turtle-ish pace, it's only fair to recognize that we chose this pace so we could talk freely and easily about the minutia of our daily lives. That was the main purpose of the outings at the time; the running was secondary.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I tried to follow a friendly looking subgroup from my larger running group. We clocked in 12 hilly miles at around 9:00/mile. I thought I was going to die.

I took it a little easier last week--and Coach Crazylegs noticed. He was not pleased. You don't want to upset Coach Crazylegs, there's punishment in that.

Sooo, this week I tried to take it up a little notch. I managed 17 miles at 9:22/mile. Granted, some of you speedsters might still look down on that, but you're just being snobby if you do. I was proud of my pace.

Here's the problem: Out of the 20+ runners that ran today, not.a.single.one ran a similar pace. They all seemed to be going sub 9:00 or over 10:00. What's up with that? I joined a running group so I could run with people. If the people are too fast or slow, what's the purpose? At one point I stopped and waited for the back of the packers because I was, well, ahem, lost. And the friendly man (he said "good morning") holding a knife made me think I wasn't in the best area to go wandering.

Ah well, 17 miles are done. And Runner Boy and I are ditching the runlets so we can go to a concert tonight! Woot!

Runner Boy surfing the crowd around 11 p.m. tonight.