February 5 by the 5th

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Last year, I participated in some major craziness in the Virtual 12athon.  You can read about it here or watch some video recaps here.  This year, I’ll be participating in 5 by the 5th, a virtual run series hosted by one of my favorite blogs of late, Mommy, Run Fast.

I had planned to use my weekend long run as my run this month, but if you read my weekly recap about last week, you’ll know that my weekend long run didn’t go so well.  I guess you can’t expect much more after a wicked bout with norovirus.  So, for my Tuesday run this week, I decided to make sure I got in my 5 miles.

It’s very rare that I get the occasion to run with my sweetie.  He is considerably faster than me, so when we are both in training mode, it just doesn’t happen.  However, he isn’t training for anything really specific right now.  We have a half-marathon in April we’ll both be running, but as long as he keeps his base mileage up, he’ll put the “training” for that together in the last 6 weeks.  Meanwhile, I’m working not only on increasing my pace, but also on my endurance.

Tuesday, I had planned one of my “push runs.”  That means I run at slightly faster pace than my long runs and I also run longer intervals than I do for my long run.  I think of these runs as replacing my tempo runs until I get myself to the point again that I can run a 5-6 mile run without the breaks. Last night, I planned 5 miles with an 8:1 run/walk ratio.  Needless to say, I was delighted when Nathan told me he planned to run with me.

We started with a slower interval for a warm-up, a little more than a 10:30 pace.  After the first break, we picked it up and ran consistently around a 9:30 pace on the flatter portions of the course.  Our hilly section resulted in closer to a 9:50 pace.  We came in at almost 5.2 miles with a 10:16 average pace (that factors in our walk breaks).  It was a gorgeous evening–red skies and cool air.  At one point, the clouds were stacked up in one part of the sky looking like a giant red tornado.  Nathan called it a “tornado of awesome.”

I hope my March run for the 5 by the 5th series is just as much fun as this one!