woohoo

here's my update...and i might add, it's fairly timely.
friday was a party. i managed a few miles before the party and i managed a few drinks during the party, so no running on saturday.

sunday on the other hand was the long run. tc and i went to the sunday 7am group run. turns out there weren't many people there. i guess the sunday group is usually smaller, but adding to that effect was probably the fact that the Chicago Distance Classic half marathon was taking place at the same time.

tc and i formed our own pace group, primarily because we planned to run 12 minute pace. when we asked the person who we figured was the pace leader for the slow group what pace she'd be keeping, she said "11:30, 12:00, 13:00". wait a minute! the slowest pace group for the CARA program is supposed to be 12:00. and what the hell kind of answer was that anyway? she gave three different paces, for one damned group. buh. we decided just to run as our own group, at (hopefully) a 12 minute pace. we passed the group that we didn't want to be a part of at the first water stop...they took long enough that we arrived just behind them, but were able to start back up before them.

tc yelled out the half mile splits, and we managed to do pretty good with pacing. we fluctuated between 13 and 10:30, but most of the time our splits were pretty good for the two of us. we did manage to run a negative split overall. we came back 3 minutes faster than we went out (about 24 seconds per mile faster), most of it probably due to Gu and learning to pace a little better, oh and that reserved energy to draw upon. average pace was 12:12 (15 miles in 3:03).

basically, woohoo!

oh, and that photo, it's from engrish...i just love the weird statement the words make, and where hands land on the shirt...hehe i'm sure i look like that little guy sometimes.

up next: gotta go 8 on tuesday.