Progress

If you've been wondering I haven't been posting, it's because I've been busy running!

My progress has been great so far; I have been having a great experience running with Flying Feet and am hoping my success continues *cross fingers*.  I run with the group three times a week, and the coaching is a huge help- Dave Griffin runs this program for runners of all levels and goals.  He is a great coach, and is extremely knowledgeable- probably because of his own running experiences, as well as helping high school runners train in the past.  He's been running the program for a while, and I'm very happy to have found out about it, because I know it will be a huge part of successfully completing this journey.

It's a brand new experience for me to be running with others, and I was super nervous.  I have the benefit of a college friend, Steph, also joining this program.  And it turns out one of her friends, Megan, who had also gone to college with us, had done the program in the past, and joined again for the summer program.  Having some friendly, familiar faces in the crowd really helped calm my nerves a little bit.

The rest of my nerves calmed down a bit once I realized how awesome it was to run with other people... first of all, I'm learning a lot- apparently I was running too fast- most runners make the mistake of running faster than they should... although I joked around that this probably wasn't a problem of mine- once I got together with my pace group, I realized, holy cow, I really was running too fast!  No wonder I wasn't able to pull off a longer run, I was using all my gas within the first few miles... this new running pace is great- for instance, my 8 mile run on my own was a nightmare- over-ran the first half, had to walk a lot the second half (and cry)... but this weekend I ran an hour and fifteen minutes with my pace group, running the second half of the run a full 2 minutes faster than the first half, feeling stronger than ever (runner's high really does exist!)...

Although, with a group run in a half hour, and mother nature not giving me a break (so hot!!!), we'll see if I get lucky with another good run- because I've also learned that on any given day no runner knows when a rough run will hit us.