It was supposed to be a long run day, my calendar said 17 miles but I'd signed up for this ten mile race. It was a beautiful morning, not to warm and very little humidity to speak of, the wind was from the NW and the race was a point to point run mostly heading south, a perfect day for running.
After meeting up with my friends Brian and Jan we took a short run to warm up and then it was race time. Brian and I started together as Jan took off into the distance and then I took off leaving Brian behind me. The race is mostly downhill and I plodded my way through the first mile in 7:12, my second mile came in at 7:04 and my third mile was faster still a 6:53. I realized I was going much faster than I had expected or even wanted to run. So when I hit the long uphill section I slowed way down, I didn't want to totally trash my quads with all the hard downhill running.
About half way through mile 5 Brian caught up with me and we ran together through 8 miles when I let him go ahead. I took the last couple of miles at a very comfortable pace and finished in 1:14:16. I felt great! After hanging out at the finish for a while I jogged around for a bit of a cool down (extra mile) and headed home.
I called Jenny on my way home to see if she wanted to go for a run. So together we set out for a short run of just over three miles taking my total for the day to around 15.
Unfortunately I had run the downhills a little too hard and my quads are in serious need of recovery. Perhaps next year I'll try and set a PR on this course, a very definite possibility.
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