Flying High

I had a great workout during our Tuesday Night Flyer's session. It was so cold and windy I really didn't want to go, I even called Cheryl and tried to convince her to go to Starbuck's instead. She hates the cold even more than I do so I thought she would jump at the chance, but she is also very dedicated so she turned me down. I would like to think I was just kidding when I was asking, but who knows what I might have done if she would have agreed. I also called Brenda.. I told her I need her to talk some sense into me! LOL I had also tried to call Kelly but didn't get a hold of her until later. Good thing because she is usually easily persuaded to drink coffee instead of running. Not really but we do kid about it a lot.
We all huddled up around Dennis as he gave us our workout's, acknowledged our speedy runners from the Valentine's day 5K and cautioned those who had been sick to listen to their bodies and not over do it.

Pretty much as soon as we started running I felt a sharp twinge in my ankle, but luckily it passed and I never felt any pain there again. I really wanted to take the 2 mile warm up nice and easy. I knew we had an intense LT workout ahead of us. Bailey, Kelly, Arland,Cheryl and I all kind of ran together. Of course I had to stop at Andrea's for a pit stop, along with Cheryl, Kelly and Rock. Andrea told me to go to the one in her bedroom and her husband was in there, I always feel kind of embarassed but he is a very nice guy and when I thanked him for letting us invade his home every Tuesday evening he just smiled and said something about the "pee train".
Bailey and Arland didn't need to hop on the pee train so they went on without us. When we started running again Cheryl said she was going to have to stop, so Kelly and I ran her back to the school. I felt terrible for her because I know her foot was really hurting and she had driven all the way from Sherwood. We didn't mind at all going back to the school and it helped give us our full 2 mile warm-up.
We caught back up with everyone else during strides and then it was time for the workout. Advanced was 20 minutes at LT pace. My LT pace is supposed to be 9:39 and Kelly and I had talked on the way back and she was going to try to run a 10:00 or 9:50 pace. I told her I thought I would just run with her becasue I didn't know if I could run any faster. When we started out it was Kelly, Arland Bailey and myself. We did stay together for a little bit but without realizing it we were starting to pull ahead. I had my Garmin set on the screen that showed avg pace and the time, we were consistently running a 9:14 avg pace, and at first that felt pretty good. Dennis ran by and complimented my form and I was just generally feeling great... and then we hit the wind and it was like a knife it literally sucked the breath right out of me. We were running in a figure 8 so we weren't always in the wind but when we were it was really hard, both mentally and physically. Bailey was great she kept gently encouraging me, she didn't push at all and if I slowed a bit so did she. Around the 12 minute range I really was starting to feel drained and I felt like I was slowing down, I told myself you are running way faster than your LT pace you can slow down if you want to. It just seemed so hard and I just knew I had really slowed down and there was going to be a big difference between the first 1/2 and the second 1/2 of the run. I really don't like looking at my Garmin a lot when I'm running so I would just glance at it every now and then, so I was really suprised when we got to 17 minutes and we were at a 9:12 avg pace. I knew I only had three minutes left and surely I could keep up the pace for that long. In the end we ended up with a 9:09 avg pace!! woo hoo. I was pretty happy!! I was almost nervous to tell Arland and Dennis what we had done. Dennis is very adamant about we need to run our prescribed pace's, but he wasn't upset he said I looked good while running and that I need to "recalibrate" we are going to do another timed mile in March.
I was riding pretty high after that, When we hit 20 I gave Bailey a big hug I was so happy!!
We walked back to the meeting spot, did our strides talked to Dennis and then ran back to the school... well first I had to go back and get my jacket and then someone mentioned a head band left behind, luckily the wind hit me and I remembered I had taken one of mine off..I had started off with 3 of them!! Dennis ran back and got it for me and we were finally on our way. I tried to put my jacket on and couldn't so then I was trying to tie it around my waist and was having a lot of problems, the wind was whipping it around and we were running so it was akward. I finally got it done and then realized that I had lost my headband so Bailey and I turned around, I thought it wouldn't be very far but it was almost all the way back to the stop sign. Oh well we all ways like to add on so it worked out great.. would have been even better if my Garmin had been on!!
The run back to the school was pretty brutal, the wind had really picked up and it was really, really cold in the upper 20's.
It was too cold to hang around chatting so pretty much everyone jumped in their cars and were off!!
It was an awesome workout out and I was feeling great!! I just hated that Cheryl had to go home early. She did the right thing, right now she needs to worry more about healing and less about mileage!!