Today was the end of Week 13/26 of the AustinFit training. That means its Benchmark time! By now, we should all be able to do a 20K run - about 12.5 miles - at our target pace. So we all turned up to see if we could.

Well, I say “all.” Our groups are getting noticably smaller every week at this point. I don’t know if its the longer distances, the colder weather, the longer time committment, or what, but people are dropping out like flies. Not me, though - for some strange reason, I’m still really loving this running stuff :-)

Anyway, on to the benchmark. We started out West down the trail, crossed North at MoPac, and turned West again to Deep Eddy and out onto Lake Austin Blvd. A nice couple of miles over to the boat docks, where we met someone’s husband who’d volunteered to provide a food/water stop for the whole program - very cool of him. A quick top-up with water, and a handful of animal crackers and gummi bears later, and we’re heading up North towards 35th. Always before we’d turned back at this point, so this is uncharted territory for me.

We ended up running along Scenic drive. This road follows the river, and has some beautiful views and gorgeous houses. It, and the roads around it, are also home to some quite charming (but steep) hills. This turned out to be a Good Thing; it felt really good to attack them and run up slightly faster than our normal pace. A couple of people ran them with me, so we had little mini-races towards the tops at every hill, then slowed way down to wait for the rest of the group (and our coaches) to catch up to us.

We stopped at Mayfield Park to turn around - waited a little too long, since there was a line for the (single) porta-potty and some of the group needed to use it. It actually got pretty crowded there as the whole program was running the same course. We ended up leaving after the 10:40 group, who are somewhat more competitive (but ended up leaving people waiting in line when they headed out) to run back.

Got a little turned around going back, but nothing too bad, and ended up running to the boat docks. I started to lag going up the last big hill of the day, but was still running at pace - just not racing up it any more. Our support husband had packed up by the time that we reached his station at the dock, so it was a good opportunity to take my 1st Gu of the day (should have been my second, but the gummi bears took its place) at about mile 8. This stretch, while pretty boring and empty, is one of my favorites for some odd reason. The team pace seemed a little too slow, so I decided to stretch my legs and ran the 2+ miles in to the MoPac rest area. Got a “demerit” from Christopher for doing it too - or maybe for not taking my walk break in the middle of it. Still, I felt good.

The last couple of miles were pretty uneventful. East along the north side of the lake, over to Congress, across, and back to RunTex. At the penultimate stop (about 1.5 to go), I found out that we’d been out for 2:25 already, which seems like we took way too long. Our goal should have been 2:17 for the whole distance! I ran the last mile and a half in with someone else who was getting a little frustrated (about a 9:40 pace I think). Still had strength left after that, which is a good sign.

Still, that puts us at around 2:40 for the whole trip (I didn’t check exactly). This is far from reassuring, since its less than a half-marathon distance. Something odd happened though, since I found out that the previous group had come in a good 30 minutes before we did. I don’t know if we took a bizarre route back, or what, but my guess is that even with our extra breaks we ended up running further. Still, who knows? This would be the week after Anthony’s GPS batteries gave out on him…

Calories: about 250 (1 Gu, animal crackers, gummi bears)
Calories burned: about 1,700.

Popularity: 2%