May 9 2009
We had our coached run this Saturday at Mill Valley. That's like the other side of Bay Area. It was supposedly a central location for SF, East Bay - Bay Side, East Bay - Diablo Valley and Marin folks. Jen Conlu (one of my mentors), Tony and I decided to carpool till Mill Valley and I was glad Jen was driving. It took us about 45 mins from Hayward to reach there and I was sitting in the back of her car and almost dozing off. But the ride was fun cause I was teasing Tony cause it was only his second coached runs today (His first was the one right after kickoff), so he wasnt very familiar about the difference between coached runs and regular runs. Well, we stopped at a gas station on our way and Tony bought a big bottle of Gatorade out there. Well, if he was a regular at the Saturday runs he would have known that all this stuff is already provided. The mentors take turns to get this stuff for everyone. Mentors are awesome and I am fortunate that our team has 2 awesome mentors. Both Devina and Jennifer are the kindest and most considerate people.
So we reach there at around 7:45 and the coach for the Marin team (I think) told us about the route and where the stops were, etc. But there was no shouting "GO TEAM, NO WIMPS, EAST BAY ROCKS...." like Coach Al does. I realized for the first time how much I love doing that with the team before a run. A bunch of us half marathoners took off. The route was nice and went through some residential places and had some great views of the bay. It was different that east bay. The course had a few hills, but it wasnt bad at all. After Redwoods, no hill seems that bad. I felt like I did pretty good time wise. I did spend more time at the water stop than I should have.
Coming back, I caught up with Jen at about 5.5 miles and started running with her. As I said before, it is much more fun running with someone. Until mile 6, I didnt even realize that I hadnt put my knee strap on. My knee has recovered very well. But then I could feel that if I didnt do something my pain could come back, so I wore a strap around my knee and ran the remaining 2 miles. I did it in 1:40, so about 2 minutes faster than my earlier runs and this was with a almost 5 minute water and potty stop. So I am doing pretty good with my training. This was my 3rd time doing 8 miles and now 8 miles doesnt seem like a lot.
My race pace has improved from about 12:05 to 11:10 per mile for a 4 mile run. So I have improved by about 1 minute per mile. I am pretty happy about that. My personal goal is to have a 10 min per mile pace. I should get there pretty soon. Of course when I run longer miles, my pace is about 12:30 or so, cause of the stops and the run/walks.
After the run, the Bay to Breakers got their sendoff packets with their TNT shirts and other stuff. I am so excited for them. We have a bunch of people from our team doing B2B: Medina, Rod, Danielle, Eliza, Todd, Jennifer W, Tony, Priscilla. These are the ones I remember. Their race is this Sunday, May 17th. I will probably DVR the race cause my husband is planning to run the "India Literacy Project 5K race" the same morning. So, I will go support him. But I will be supporting my teammates too. GO TEAM!!!
O and I also wanted to put up one more pic of a group hugs, we have groups hugs at the start of most coached runs. Aww..just one of Coach Al's traditions. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment