Friday, March 22, 2013

Spring, if only in our step!

I am happy spring is here! Not so thrilled about snow that is still falling outside, especially not with a tempo looming this afternoon. But I will just be thankful for tights, and wind proof gloves! The past few weeks have seen some fun running for my teammates and I! I will try to recap some of that for you guys to read!
We have been hitting right around 75-80 miles a week for a few months, and it seems just normal for most days to be 10-12 miles at this point. Our long runs have ranged from 14-19 and we have been enjoying a lot of time chatting during them. I think I have had a running partner more days in the past 2 months, than I have had in 2 years combined! With Ryan, Lizzie, Nicole, Jennie, Kaitlin, Heidi, Aubrey, Heather and Shanna around I hardly ever have to run 2 days in a row solo! It has been a lot of fun getting to know these ladies better and hearing about their goals and aspirations only further fuels my fire to chase down my own dreams!

Nicole and I primarily do workouts together on Tuesday, but as of recent we have had Aubrey and Heather are up there with us as well and it is fun to have a larger group! Splits in workouts are feeling more and more comfortable at faster paces. There was a week where we ran a mile at the end of the workout suppose to be hard @5:24. I ran 5:30 to close that workout in February. This past week we did something similar, only we weren't suppose to run hard, it was just another interval and we were 5:16 after 4 other miles worth of work (1200-1600m intervals) under 5:20 pace. So I see progress!

We laced up our racing flats on March 16th to celebrate St. Patty's day and we came away with one hell of a day! St. Malachi 5 miler in downtown Cleveland was easily the scariest conditions I have ever raced in. It was cold, sleeting, snowing, and just plain SLIPPERY! My goals went from running fast, to not falling during the 5 miles before the race ever started. But thanks to my speedy training partner Nicole, we went out hard and survived the race in true NEO Runner fashion! Our training group went 26:07 Jessica-1st, 26:14 Nicole-2nd, 26:54 me-3rd 30:16 Aubrey-4th, and 30:48 Lizzie-6th. Not a bad day at all! We raced pretty fast, and managed to walk away injury free. Ryan ran his first race since Thanksgiving, and came away with a 3rd place finish in 25:16! We are getting fit!

Our group has some races coming up and we are looking forward to them! We will be in action next friday in Raleigh at the Raleigh relays where Aubrey, Heidi (not formally part of the group, but we claim her), and I will race 5k and Nicole with bring down her 10k PR! Then we are off to Chicago the following week to race USA Club 8k Championships where we hope to challenge for the win! Two weeks later we will be in Columbus to race at the Jesse Owens Classic! So look up results and cheer us on if you see us!

I hope everyone is having as much fun this spring so far as I am! Stay warm out there!

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