Thursday, December 22, 2011

Is it Spring?

We are just days away from Christmas and it got to a high of 61 here in Central Ohio yesterday. Are you kidding me? It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's that warm out (and you aren't used to it). But you know what that temperature does get you in the mood for? An outdoor run.

I emailed Lisa yesterday to see about a run tonight but she wasn't available so we opted to go last night. And the weather was great. It had been stormy off and on all day but it cleared up and we were able to run. It felt strange running without a coat, multiple other layers, gloves, etc.

Lisa has helped me a few times with some speed work but last night we opted to just go a little longer at a steady pace. When I run with someone, I can fairly easily pick up the pace a little so just by running a steady pace with Lisa, I was running faster than I do when I'm on my own.

The first 2.5 miles were nearly all uphill and into the wind and while I whined a little, I knew it meant it would be smooth sailing once we turned back around. Ha....that is until we were crossing a dark overpass. It was hard to see and with water on the sidewalk, I couldn't see that there was a hole in the sidewalk. Naturally I dropped my right foot into said hole and rolled my ankle...again. Ouch. It hurt pretty bad so we stopped to walk. We had less than a mile to go. Boo! I really wanted to see how fast we could get in all 5 miles though so my stubborn/competitive streak won out over the sore ankle and we started to run again. It actually felt better to run so we cruised on back to Lisa's house.

5 miles in 1:02....faster than my goal race pace! Even with the walk breaks and a rolled ankle. And only a few seconds slower than my last 5 miler....also known as the sweatfest.

I'm sort of glad to see that the crazy weather today was short lived. The high today is supposed to be 48 and the high on Friday is 38. Gotta love Central Ohio...but I do prefer it to be cold for Christmas. :)

2 comments:

  1. It's been insanely warm here too! I ran like two miles last night and it was really warm out. I think the high in Charlotte is about 70 degrees today. Very weird!

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  2. Running uphill sucks, but I was just reading an article last night about how awesomely good it is for increasing speed. Something about forcing higher leg lifts and strengthening specific muscles faster. So, yay hills!

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