Inspired and an Inspiration

Funny, I never really thought that I would ever be both inspired and used to inspire someone else in the same day.

Since I will be camping out at the Nashville Zoo this evening with 23 Cub Scouts and family, I will not be making my long, slow run tomorrow out in the back 40.

My neighborhood is good for maybe up to a 7 mile route....if I really, really get creative and do some massive zig zagging to avoid running on two major hills and in front of my house before I am finished. I didn't want to run down the Barkers Mill/Chapel Hill route because as I have said before, I really dislike it.

I did attempt to bribe a kid to ride with me down Barkers Mill (where I would go down Carter Road rather than all the way down Chapel Hill) but every one of them backed out when I mentioned I wanted to go at 7 am. I don't like the idea of running on isolated country roads alone, no matter how safe I think it is. I also didn't want to drive to the fairgrounds and run solo. As I was pondering this sad state of my running route last night, I got an email from Candi. She wanted to run this morning. Yay! That means I will not be solo.

I was down at the fairgrounds about 7 am and I brought my mp3 player...just in case Candi was not there. As it turned out, she didn't make it but Samantha was there so my mp3 player stayed in my van.

We decided to duplicate our route from last week...run to the 4 mile mark and then turn and do the 4 miles backwards so we finish at the start line.

It was a bit warmer than last week and I was still a bit sore from the running I had done during the week. Samantha has been working nights (she is a nurse) and had not been running in a few days so we wanted to take it easy. Famous last words...we always want to take it easy!

We were just past 4 miles when we saw Grant and Michelle pull up. We had totally forgot that today was the day for the new Couch to 5K group to begin. As we passed by, Grant told us to stop by and say hello so he could introduce us. When we lapped by again, he asked us to stop.

Now, this was almost 5 miles into the run and neither of us really wanted to break our momentum by stopping but since Grant was our coach/trainer/running buddy...of course we did. He introduced us to the new group, said we had been in the spring group, asked us how far we were running today and then asked if we would say something. Nothing like being put on the spot! Sam and I looked at one another and kinda shrugged.

We just said that we were in the same boat in February, if we had been told we would be runnning 8 miles, we would have laughed. We also said that they would improve and to stick with it.

We only stopped for a few minutes and then we continued our run. It was kinda fun to be out on the 10K course with the new group because we could so relate to them. We also had to laugh (quietly, at ourselves) at how we had been so sure Grant was making us run longer and further than the schedule called for. When we first started, those 90 seconds of running seemed to go on forever.

We got to the 8 mile mark and decided we were just not feeling the nine miles today. We did grab our water and do a half mile cool down walk.

1 mile - 11:35
2 mile - 12:35
3 mile - 12:35
4 mile - 12:16
5 mile - 12:14
6 mile - 12:38 (this was the lap we stopped to talk, we just stopped our time and restarted)
7 mile - 12:59
8 mile - 12:05
Total running time: 1:38:57
Pace: 12:22

I was darn happy since for the last two days, I have been running closer to a 13:30 mile. Incredible how having someone there will just give you that added oomph to go.