Today we met at Coach Gilbert’s house for a really interesting fifteen miles. This was nice because I live all of two miles away, so I got to the workout early even after a very leisurely start to the day. Of course when I say leisurely, that’s relative, because I was still ready to go by 5:45.

We ran North on Manchaca for 3.2 miles until we got to the first Gatorade stop. I ran with a several people, chatting for a few minutes, and looking for someone else doing the full distance. There’s a pretty popular race here on Monday and a lot of people had planned on turning back at the six mile point, when I was going to keep going and end up with the full fifteen. Eventually I found out that Mike and Carrie (who I ran with last weekend) were doing the full distance, so that was a good sign.

I ended up running a little faster than I had originally planned on, a bit faster than Mike and Carrie, but there were some fairly nice downhills along the way so it wasn’t a huge deal. I did end up averaging sub-nines to the Gatorade, and I’m aiming at somewhere between 8:30-9:30 according to McMillan (towards the slow end of that range according to Gilbert) for my goal 8:00 pace. As I was wrapping up Jason and Mike came up so I waited for a minute and headed off with them, something that’s much nicer on a long run than ending up solo.

After the water stop we continued North on Manchaca until it merged in with Lamar, then continued up towards Town Lake. We did spend a fair amount of time talking through here, so my sum-nines were gone for the time being; about three miles later we came to our second hydration stop, straight water this time. With the Texas heat its important to drink a lot, and I was careful to keep knocking it back as it it was, well, water.

Once past the water we continued up Lamar and ran over the Pfluger footbridge to the North side of the trail, then took a right and did the South First loop. This gave us yet another stop at the RunTex water coolers, about at the halfway point, so I took my Gu and we ambled around gently for a minute. Just before heading off I bumped into Rona, who I haven’t seen since my AustinFit days, so we chatted for a minute or two and then I took off after the guys. That explains my 11:00 time for that mile!

Jasson and I met back up fairly quickly, but Mike was a comfortable minute or so ahead of us. The way back had quite a few more uphills (and correspondingly fewer downhills) and was slower overall, but I felt pretty good and it wasn’t really a hard workout until we got back to the first Gatorade stop. We ended up taking our time here, making sure we were hydrated, and then picked it up somewhat for the run back. At least, we started out at about an 8:15 which slowed down about 45 seconds as we slogged our way up some annoyingly long hills. Once we got nearer the end we picked it up again, even though it was still uphill, and I made sure that I got my pace down under 8:30 for the last mile.

Could I have pushed harder at the end? Sure, but it was hot and I know that we’re not supposed to be going all out on these runs, even near the finish. I’m wondering if I should be doing the last three miles down at marathon pace though. The lack of shade and hard surfaces made it harder this week than last week’s finish on the trail, but I’ll be running on the roads in NYC too. Decisions, decisions. My final stats were 15.09 miles in 2:23:49 (uncorrected) for a 9:32 average pace including lights, conversations, and water stops.

After the run was over we did six acceleration strides, then headed to Coach’s back yard where he had a great Texas style after-run get together: breakfast tacos, Gatorade, and half an hour of stretching with people who’ve all run at least ten miles that morning. Really, isn’t that simply the best way to wake up on a Saturday?

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