DISCOVERY RUN!

Afterward with my pace group leader.

As planned, I went to the Discovery Run Thursday night in Tualatin. Due to some traffic I cut my arrival a little closer than I would have liked but I still made it in time. Instead of branching off on my own like last time, I joined a pace group for the run this time. This is an option that I don't remember from doing this run last year. Basically you have a leader that plots out a course to hit as many of the stops as possible and then takes you there at a certain pace.

I was already pretty worn out, so to take the agitation of finding all the stops myself out of the equation was pretty nifty. Just mindlessly follow a group and collect raffle tickets. Sounds good to me. My late arrival meant that by the time I checked in the pace group had just left, so I had to chase them down. They were supposed to be going "8 to 9 minutes per mile, more close to 9" according to the announcer lady, but I call BS on that. I did about a 7:00/mile pace to catch up and then found myself running 7:30ish once caught up.

After the first mile the leader realized he was going too fast and toned it down, but we still ran a solid 8:00/mile. Once I was warmed up I actually kind of liked this pace, it was nice to do a tempo run where I could just follow someone and zone out. Plus, we got to stop every five or ten minutes at a station and collect raffle tickets. So it was more like a speed workout with long intervals. Overall, the run was really fun! I didn't win anything, but did enjoy my two free beers for going. Yum!

This weekend proved difficult to get a long run in. Basically I was tied up all of Saturday with one of Brandon's lacrosse tournaments and had some stuff on Sunday that left me at 4:30pm still not having run a lick all weekend. It was 84 degrees outside and probably the last thing on Earth I wanted to do was go for a run. But I sucked it up buttercup and got my ass out there. Excuses be damned, I was going to get my run in otherwise I'd feel guilty about it all week.

I initially had my portable radio strapped my arm to listen to the Beavers baseball playoff game. They were choking harder than George W. Bush on a pretzel though and it was pissing me off so I ended up switching it to a music station. It was kind of fun to have just random music to run to and helped pass the time. Nothing like a jazzy, upbeat song from the 80s to get you moving. Around mile 10.5 I unplugged though, my body was starting to complain and sound in my ears suddenly was not welcome. Just wanted to do those last fifteen minutes "natural."

Speaking of natural, I'll be doing a naked run this August in Portland. It's called the "Free Ball 5k" and comes complete with a spaghetti and meatball feast afterward in addition to the "truck nuts" medal. Just kidding. But I totally had you there for a second. All told my long run was twelve miles at a 9:28 pace. Still kind of irked that twelve miles wears me out like that did, but I did run that one in the heat so all told I'm fairly content with it.