Tuesday after a quick dinner, my wife took the kids to my daughter's soccer practice. This freed me up to cut the grass and put down some fertilizer on the yard. Once this was done, I headed out for an easy 5 mile run to stretch the legs. I was still pretty sore from the Tough Mudder. I ran my typical 4.7 mile route at an easy pace with a slow(er) cadence, roughly 10:00m/m to 10:30m/m for the first couple miles. There were many people out walking on the sidewalks, and I guess they've never been passed by a runner as none of them moved over and I almost hit one guy. Sadly, my anger gets the best of me and I was just thinking, "I dare you to say something." Cooler heads prevailed and I got into a nice groove.
I have to be honest, now that I upload my runs to Strava, I feel like "everyone" can see my run. I know that blogging about it is the same thing, but only a few people read this and I could easily lie (though I don't). The Strava data comes straight from the Garmin and is there for the running and biking community to see. When scanning local Strava runs, someone can easy see:
Brandon Bistor 4.7 mile run 47:49 time 10:07m/m pace
That little Scarlet Letter is now in the back of my head. Not only do I want to beat my previous run times, unless it's a recovery run like this, but I want to have the fastest pace of everyone on Strava. This is ridiculous, obviously. There are people on Strava running at all paces, but I still don't want to put up a "slow" time. This thought caused my last two miles to be the fastest. At one point, on Cooper road during a slight decline in front of the Junior High, I was going 6:45m/m and holding it pretty well. I'd love to get to the point where that was my pace! I felt like Ryan Hall (American Olympic runner)! This helped my 4th mile pace average 9:30m/m. Higher cadence is the way to do it. Less injury, faster paces, nearly the same HR as slower paces with slower cadence, it's great. I know the running community has known this forever, but for some reason I'm just now embracing it.
The run turned out to be a great stretch. I ran 4.7 miles in 47:49, with an average pace of 10:07m/m, burning 537 calories with an avg HR of 162bpm (best pace was 6:25m/m). The old me would have loved this 10:07m/m pace for a regular run, now it feels slow. Gotta love progress!
I have the Capital City Half Marathon in Columbus, Ohio, this Saturday, so I will be resting the rest of the week. I hope my soreness goes away. Even my feet are sore from the unusual climbing I did at the Tough Mudder. I still have some pretty gnarly bruises on my arms and legs. This weekend I'm just doing the Cap City run as a casual run, nothing serious. I'll be pacing a buddy as it's his first half marathon, my fifth.
Ryan Hall photo:
Here is my Strava data:
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