Wednesday, April 2, 2014

"Tuesday Night Hills"


So to start off today’s run I explored a new set of hills on a 8 mile loop starting from the Y and heading North along the Bluff down to 32nd.  I’m always amazing at variety of landscape Dubuque offers and how it makes for such great training!  There are some pretty awesome areas and very cool old houses along the river bluffs and it makes the miles fly by while consistently hitting about 100 feet of elevation per mile.    On the flip side there were a lot of a twists and turns which made navigating the route a little difficult, thankfully Scott joined me and had written down the directions so we stayed on track.   The route was fun, challenging and a great way to warm the legs up for the group run.  We timed this one to finish as the group run started so we transitioned into the next run without risking stiffening up…

The group run was a little over 6 mile route.  It took us from Washington Middle School to the Opening Doors 5K start point on Clark Drive.  From there we ran the course at a “tempo” pace… I ran it at 6:57 pace… not quite a tempo run but enough to get a good feel for the hills and upcoming race.   The course is a grinder, the first mile is downhill, second is low rolling hills and the final mile is a fairly large assent…  they also added a subdivision on mile three that adds some extra elevation.  I can definitely say that I’m prepared with my training and I know my body is capable of running a great pace for this race, it is a little scary knowing this one all comes down to guts as it’s going to be a tough finish and there is no way around that.  So after running the course and all of us feeling a little worse about it than we expected, we trudged back to Wash to finish off the run. 


So while nervously reviewing Saturday’s race course I remind myself once again if I wanted it easy I would have taken up golf J    There is a reason I picked this crazy sport, there is a reason I’ve ramped up my workouts over these last few months, the fuel behind every painful, freezing cold, and hilly mile I push through ... and that reason is about to pay off again Saturday when I let my legs loose and enjoy what I love doing most, RUNNING FAST 


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