Getting better...

I'm  happy to report that tonight's tempo run with the group was better than last week.  Still not super, but better. 

There wasn't a big turn out tonight - maybe because it coincided with the Canucks first playoff game, and you know, we rearrange leadership debates in this country for hockey, so I'm sure there are some that would miss their group run for the game!  Anyway, we all just paired off and headed down the road at an easy pace to start off.

At the beginning, we were all clumped together and chatting, but even before we were supposed to start speeding up, we kinda were and the  group started to spread out.  Then it was time to really speed up and we were off.  My partner and I stuck together and for 10 minutes were going WAY TOO FAST.  We somehow managed to keep it going, but were no longer chatting.  Every so often, one of us would say that we needed to slow down, but we just kept going.  After 15 minutes, we did slow it down a bit, but then sped up again, just not quite as fast as we were going originally.  Ahh, the happy pace!  It wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was maintainable.  After 30 minutes at a faster pace, we were supposed to slow down.  That happened to coincide with a big hill climb, so we did slow down, but once we got to the top, I'm pretty sure we sped up again.  We finished the last 25 minutes of the run at a good pace, a little faster than comfortable, and definitely not the slow pace we were suppposed to return to.  Oops! 

This was better than last week because I didn't have to walk, and for a while I think I found the pace I should be aiming for on tempo runs.  This wasn't super because other than a feeling, I have no way of knowing what pace I was running because I forgot my Garmin, and I still started out too fast at the beginning.  The best part is, I feel like I'm making progress, and that's a good feeling!