10K X 2!

Last week was one of our "off" weeks in terms of mileage.  Our longest run on the schedule was "only" 12 miles.  Ha ha!  I ran 5 miles on Thursday evening with the 10K class (they only had 2 on the schedule so we had to add an extra loop).  Saturday morning was a quick 5 miles from my house down to the Bay and back. 

Sunday was the Cold Turkey 10K race in South County.  I've run this race for the past 3 years or so.  It is usually cold, and typically a pretty day.  This year was no exception.  The difference is that I am normally not really trained up to 6 miles.  As we were pulling up to the high school where the race begins and ends, I tweeted that it only seems reasonable to run a 10K race, finish, and run the course again when one is in marathon training.  And that is what we did!

The race was actually about .2 miles short.  Which explained why I was shocked to be averaging 10:30 minute miles doing Galloway at Mile 2.  I slowed down a bit, but still was averaging just under 11:00 minute miles.  I find it's pretty difficult for me to conciously slow myself down during a race.  This could potentially be a problem during the Half-marathon portion of Goofy.  I have one more race to work on this: the Celtic Solstice 5-miler in December.  It's the first leg of our 22 mile day, so hopefully I'll be able to keep it slow and easy.  We'll see.

Anyway, even with the short course, I averaged 10:50 minute miles for 6 miles.  Yikes!  We finished the race, grabbed some water and snacks, and headed back out on the course again.  Luckily we waited long enough that everyone was pretty much finished by the time we headed back out.  While I thought doing the course again would seem tedious, it really wasn't all that hard.  We were much slower, of course, but mentally the out-and-back nature of this loop makes it pretty easy to handle.  My legs were a little tired from running the first half quickly, but they persevered.  It is a pretty hilly course, though!  Thankfully, it was much easier than the 12 miles I struggled with a few weeks ago.

With this week being a holiday week, I'll be scrambling to get my runs in.  Tonight, I'm going to attempt to get anywhere from 3-5 in, and then my Thursday and Saturday runs will be in South Carolina.  I'm aiming to get 9 or 10 miles in total there.  I'll be back Saturday night, and we have another 12-miler planned for Sunday.

Happy Thanksgiving!