Officially, we had 7 miles to run today. Also officially, the program wasn’t meeting. About half the remaining participants met anyway at 7:15 for a nice, short run. This lets us drop down to about half the distance of the previous weekend’s 20K, and gives those of us who ran the Turkey Trot on Thursday a nice slow short run to recover with.

Anyway, we met up and there was much discussion about our run times. Turns out that Anthony had finished in 47:00 or so, Alex in 43:something. I had bumped into Julie at the race, and she’d done 55:00 due to a hurt ankle - she was taking today off, and we’re all hoping that everything will be alright after a little rest. Note that her “bad time” was still right on the official marathon training pace, so that’s not all bad…

Back to the run. 7 miles generally means that MoPac to I-35 loop, and today was no exception. This was a pretty slow comfortable pace, at least in comparison to the 9:00 miles we were turning in three days before. Headed to MoPac first, lots of random discussions going on as we turned towards 35, from running in Bejing (sounds like fun) to the best ways to deal with character issues when writing fiction from across a gender gap. Obscure, yet strangely light-hearted as if everyone was taking it easy after the holiday.

I’d like to take a second here to think about that. This was a Seven. Mile. Run. And we all knew that it was no big deal. Back in September, I was wondering if I was going to be able to keep up with the group … on a two mile jog. And, IIRC, was wishing that we’d taken a couple of additional breaks along the way. Its amazing how far I’ve come in just three short months! I love this sport.

Anyway, that was about it - went up to the freeway, across, down Riverside and back to RunTex. Smiles, stretches, and then back home (or in my case, up to Dallas to do some shopping). Next weekend is 10 miles, then 8, then our 25K benchmark on the 20th.

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