Virtual 10K in the books

I met up with a new running friend, Danielle, today for our long run.  We did 6 miles together a couple of weeks ago at Sharon Woods, and decided to meet up again today.  Our half-marathon times are within a minute of each other, and we have very similar lives (both busy moms of twins!), so she is an ideal training partner.  We met at a small park that connects to the Olentangy Trail, a really nice place to run that is about 20 miles long.  I actually haven't ever ran it, mainly because I tend to stick close to home when I run, but when Danielle suggested it, I figured why not?

We met at 6:30 AM and were running within about 15 minutes.  Our original plan was to do an out-and-back of 3.5 miles, so a total of 7 miles of running.  Danielle is running a 10-mile race at the beginning of August, so she is trying to get in some longer runs.  Me, well I am still in my 5K-training-mode, and had only planned on about 3-4 miles until Danielle asked if I wanted to run together, so I honestly had no training pace in mind or anything.  Which was good, because boy, was it ever humid!  It was drizzling but there was enough tree cover that we weren't really getting wet from the rain.  However, we were soaked pretty quickly as the humidity was close to 100%.  Ugh!  It made running a lot harder.  After 3 miles we decided to go ahead and turn around.  Danielle's heartrate was a lot higher than it typically is for the speed we were going at (not super fast for either of us), and we were both feeling the effects of the weather.  We did try to up our pace towards the end, especially the final quarter-mile or so.  I ran an extra 0.2 so that I could say I ran 6.2 miles, which is a 10K.  

 


I had planned on running my virtual 10K next weekend, but I figured why not just get it done today, since I was so close anyway.  Now I can post a picture of my bling!  Actually, it's in my car, so I will post it later on today.  This was my first virtual race.  It was only $10 to participate, and I get a super-cute medal out of it.  Why not?!  Some virtual races, you actually post your time and they actually compare the runners' times, but this one is really just about running.  

Well, my stomach is telling me that it needs more than the banana I had pre-run, so I am going to go fix a yummy breakfast of eggs and toast, and maybe some bacon too!  I am excited to go to RunFest this afternoon... hoping for some freebies!