First Day of Fall

Saturday, September 22, 2012, first day of fall:

I like to run rather hard for a modest distance about a week before a marathon, maybe a 5k, 8k, or 10k race. No race today, but eight of us showed up for the Saint Croix Valley Runners this morning, four runners and four walkers.  Dave and Roy chose the Manning Avenue route, while Lisa and I decided to take the less windy and more peaceful Lake Mckusick route.  Lisa is much faster than me, so she “pulled” me at a faster pace than I might have run otherwise.  That’s good for me.

Leftovers, mostly organic and all yummy, plus
one local, organic, enormous, honeycrisp apple.

I started my watch a little late, but I’m sure that I ran the five miles in less than 44 minutes, hence a pace easily less than nine minutes per mile.  That’s great, because I actually did four 30-second walks during the run.  No pains.  I’m happy.

Friday, September 21, 2012:

We ran between raindrops, just a short 40-minute jog.  I went 2.9 miles, with a run/walk ratio of one to one, 30 seconds each, but didn’t bring my watch so I’m guessing a pace of about 11 minutes per mile.  I did hump a little bit up one long hill for about two and a half minutes, but that was the only exception to the ratio.  No pains, good run.