Back on the road

After a two day hiatus from running outside, I hit the road again tonight. I found a trail that goes down into an abandoned campground in a ravine formed by a creek near my home. It was so much nicer running on the trails than running through the concrete jungle of suburbia!

I did my first real hill training - the first hill was down into and back out of the campground, and then I ran down into and out of two smaller parks that center on ponds in my subdivision. I'm sure it doesn't compare to the kinds of hills that are in races, but it as still a good test for me. I'm a long way from racing anyway. :-)

I also tried something called "fartlek" that I learned about on Cool Running. It's essentially throwing sections of much faster pace running throughout the workout. I mostly did this in the last 2 km of the run.

I ran/walked a total of 7.79km today in a time of 47'55" (almost all running; I think I walked a total of about 400 or 500 meters). My 5km time was 28'45; not quite my best 5km time yet. It was my longest run yet, and the second fastest pace I've kept (6'08" per km). The only time I kept a faster pace over the course of the workout was in my third run, which was only 5.92km.

Today I also met another beginning runner that is setting up a Nike+ challenge. It will be to see who can run the most miles in September. It should be another nice motivator to keep logging the miles.