The good news is that I’m getting faster. My cardio weakness seems to be temporary - indeed, halfway through the run this morning I felt my body start to “remember” what to do, how to run more efficiently. That’s the idea! Pity that it took a few miles of less-efficient faster running to get there, but hopefully I’ll be able to take more advantage of it next time around.

I did the MoPac to I-35 loop again; I’ll probably do this every Tuesday until I get completely bored with it. Got down to the trail at about 6:00am, which was great. I wore my long-sleeved RunTex 30K shirt, but this will be the last time I bother with that unless its really cold. Like last time my goal was to do a 9:00 pace. I went ahead and took a walk break every mile or so; I’d like to wean myself away from them but I’m still suffering a little too much. Even with them, I hit a 9:50 overall pace. Considering that I knocked about 10 minutes off my previous time, I’m not too unhappy with my performance.

I did the first two miles at an 8:40 pace. Considering that the second mile includes a 1 minute walk break, that’s pretty good. Of course, I had Alex running with me for the first one, so that’s always a boost. I need to practice more to keep up with him though - he gets down into the low 7:00s by the end of his run, and I’m slowing down at that point. Just need to keep on it.

Anyway, the third mile was slower at a 10:20 pace, but I had to stop twice to rety my shoes. Mile four somehow came in at 9:54, even though I took about a minute to stand still and stretch out my ITB. I felt an odd twinge, and these days its better to take care of it before it starts to hurt. Actually, that’s always been the case, I just didn’t know it. The last three miles hit at 10:38 (with two entire minutes of walking), 10:08 and 10:30. Definately slowing down there at the end. I didn’t want to walk quite so much, but at mile five I just had a really hard time getting going again. This was behind the Statesman. I don’t know why - just a motivation issue.

One thing that I was doing was concentrating on doing good high kicks. Every time I caught myself thinking about my pace, I pushed it a little more. It worked, too - my cardio was still my limiting factor but at least now my legs are a little sore to go along with it.

I’d really like to get the time for this loop down under an hour within the next month or so…

Time: 1:08
Distance: 6.96
Calories burned: 951
GPS Log

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