So much fun to not run alone

On Saturday, I did my "long" run (6 mi) for DC Fit by myself on the trail -- I seem to fall somewhere in between the fast kids, running around 8:30/mi, and the next big group, who fall in the 9:30-9:45/mi range (there are a few stragglers in between there, but so far, most of them have been stubborn enough to try to run with the fast kids, and then have to walk after the first 2 or 3 miles because they came out too fast). I had a pretty good run, doing the 6 miles in 54:25, and at the end, I didn't feel like hell, which is an added bonus. After the run, I was talking to someone who ran with Fast Girl that I ran with for part of the previous week. As we were talking, she commented she couldn't keep up with Fast Girl, especially as the runs get longer, but she has real trouble trying to pace herself.

As it turns out, she lives half a mile from my office, so we decided to try running this week after work one day to see how it felt when we paced ourselves (mostly meaning she slowed down a bit to run with me at my normalish training pace, which for now is somewhere in the 9:00-9:15/mi range). Today, we did a timed run, 55 min. We mapped it when we got done, and it was 6 miles on the nose. We had a lot of fun during the run, since we both usually run alone, and at the end, we weren't tired, either, which was an added bonus. After today's really good and fun run, it looks like we're going to start trying to run together once or twice a week during the week, plus the Saturday runs, too.

I'm pretty excited about the prospect of not going through the summer and this training program running by myself most of the time.