Tapering Off

It's hard to believe that in less than two weeks, this adventure will be over.

After months of building up to long runs, yesterday we cut back the miles for our long run - down to 10 miles. Of course, looking back over past posts, I would have been hard pressed to say "only 10 miles."

Our group met for the final group run Saturday morning at 3rd Creek Greenway. This run would be "simple" - 5 miles down and back, taking us from Bearden down to UT and back. At 8:20, we were off. Our group decided to pick up the pace for this run, moving from a 10 minute pace down to 9:30. Starting out, however, I ran into my biggest problem on the day... firing up the iPod, I was greeted with "Connect to Power Source". Great, no music. Well, can't let it stop me, but I had to press on. One thing that I noticed early on was the lack of people. The weather, while cool, was really nice for running. I can only assume that the Easter holiday had some sort of effect.

A lot of people on the team said this run was harder than expected. I don't know if it was the excitement of the final group run, or the fact that it was only half the run we did the week before, but we forged ahead, hitting the halfway mark at Thompson-Boling Arena in 45:18. Running back the pace slowed a little as we had to navigate an Easter egg hunt on the greenway and a walk for autism futher down the greenway. We finished with a time of 1:34:12, an average of 9:25 per mile.