I ran with Sasha and Mary Ann this morning. We ran out to the lake and back. On the way out we ran a hard 1000 just a little over 2 miles into the run. The goal was to run a 3:10 and we started out hitting the first 200 in 37s followed by a 38 to make it to the quarter in 1:15. This was followed by another 37 to hit 600 in 1:52. Around this point we started hitting some patches on the trail that had snow on them and it was necessary to stutter step a bit in order to jump over them or run through them. This actually prompted me to speed up because I was trying harder not to slow down. The half mile marker was covered by snow so I don't know the split, but I finished the 1000 between 3:03-3:04 so the last quarter was done between 1:11 and 1:12. Sasha came in at 3:05-3:06, and Mary Ann, who was just supposed to pick up the pace a little, got excited and ran a 3:28.
We finished the run in 1:13:31 for 10.1 miles. I have noticed that we are slowly picking up the pace on our easy runs in the morning. For a while we were going no faster than 1:18-1:20 for 10 miles, and now we are hitting in the 1:16 range consistently and going faster on some days. We hit our first mile in 7:48 this morning, which is unheard of for us. I don't mind it as I feel pretty good, so we'll see if it helps us at all. | 