The plan today was to get to RunTex as 6:30 and head out for no more than ten miles with Shannon, who runs at almost exactly the same pace that I do. And you know what? For once, the plan worked. We were both there, and both the only people doing about our pace/distance so it was a good thing that we were. We did go over the ten mile mark, but not by much.

The weather was beautiful. Far from the humidity of this past Thursday, it was about 60 degrees and just plain wonderful, especially when we took off before the sun had risen. We were aiming for around a 9:30 pace, and she let me pick the course so I tooks us out West, past MoPac, down to the boat docks near Hula Hut. From there we headed up Scenic about halfway to 35th, and then looped around and came back down through Windsor and Exposition until we met back up with our outbound course on Lake Austin.

Confusing? Well, you can always check out the map on MotionBased. I’m going to start using it more often, which may help other folk looking for good Austin routes to run. Besides, its neat. It only has us going 10 miles, but the GPS cut out at the end of Scenic and there were a couple of other inconsistencies - I put the run at closer to 10.5 miles, which gives us a more reasonable 9:40 average pace (including water stops and lights), conversational the whole way.

So that was fun. Afterwards we were about 30 minutes early for the group stretching so we moseyed over to Jo’s for coffee and cookies, then made it back and did another 30 minutes of stretching. Its not the same without Jay leading it, but still made for an effective way to end the workout. The only thing I think I’d change is that I want to start running about 10 strides after each long run, based on the advice of some of the much faster Gazelles.

So that’s it. Now for a frenzy of packing, shopping for power converters, and other such activities.

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