Last week, I wrote about my love-hate relationship with group running. This morning, it was time to try again. I wanted to get five miles in this morning, but my group normally does a loop that's just over three miles. So I headed out by myself to get 20 minutes of running in before I met up with them. After last week's reminder that running first thing in the morning = slowness, I was also hoping that a few miles would wake me up and warm up my legs. For the miles on my own I didn't care about pace, I just wanted to make sure I was back at the house in time to meet the group. So I changed the settings on my super spiffy Nike+ GPS watch to show the current time up in the corner where it usually shows pace. Worked perfectly and I made it back to the house right at 8:30.
When we headed out again, I completely forgot that I had changed the watch settings. It was a little chilly, and our speediest runner was setting the pace, so I assumed we were moving faster than I had been on my own. I glanced down at my watch, saw a sub-9 minute pace and thought "wow, this feels quick but I don't feel like I'm running 5K pace!" This continued for the next 2.5 miles. I started to wonder how I could possibly be on pace for a near-PR 5K and still be able to converse about academic sex scandals and whether or not you can meet a boyfriend/girlfriend at an airport. Coming up on mile 3, I noticed that we were just over 9 minute pace and holding steady. I thought that was a little odd because a) it didn't feel like we'd slowed down, and b) the pace on the watch never holds that steady. This was the point when I realized that I was an idiot and that it was, in fact, just after 9am.
Still, when I got home and checked the splits, I found out that we had run the last two miles faster than I normally would (9:48 and 9:35), and I stuck with the guys for the whole loop, chatting away and never wanting to quit. So maybe I've just been psyching myself out the whole time?
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