Happy Day!

Oh, Happy day!

Yesterday I joined my running group for a 5 mile run. Usually on Tuesday's I do not run that far, more like 3 or 4 miles, but, I am increasing my weekly miles lately, so I dove in for the 5.

One thing different about this run was that Mike was not there. The impact of this is that I did not have someone who runs as slow as I do to run with, however, I knew this going into it and was ready to try to go a little faster. Recently, my running friend Don had encouraged me to try some "speed drills" on the shorter runs to build up endurance and lung power. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity to try to go faster.

As far as "speed drills" go, I have never done one. I have a book that explains how to do speed drills, but, I was not ready to try such a structured endeavor alone, so, I just ran faster.

I started out running at what seemed a normal pace for me, but then we went down a big hill. Now, going down hills I am really good at and can rather "fly" down them! When at the bottom of the hill, I realized that I was keeping pace with the faster runners in the group! Much inspired, I continued on. I fell a little behind, but for the most part kept up with them.

Another strange thing happened as I was running at this faster pace, I rarely took any walk beaks. In fact, it was the longest I had ever run without a walk break! Inspired now, on the way back, I purposed to run up the entire (very long) hill and equal my distance without a walk break. This I did, and when I made it to the top of the hill...I just kept running, no walk break was needed as now I headed down another long hill. I ended up running all the way back to the parking lot without a walk break! This was truly the longest stretch ever run with no walking!

O.K., so the weirdest, best thing about it was that I was not even really that tired when I was done! I was exhilarated! Really, I was too excited, I didn't even want to eat dinner! Craziness! I am ready to do it again!