Unfamiliar long run
This morning I met the group for our long run, and the route was a little different than anything I had done before. It was mostly familiar territory, but it was all jumbled about in a strange order.
We started out heading south on Congress to run the first section of the 2008 Austin Marathon course. It goes a little farther south than it did last year in order to avoid a downtown section where apparently they couldn’t get all the streets closed. There was an early water stop while we were still on Congress, and shortly after that we turned to start making our way back up.
It got a little strange after that. Gilbert was at RunTex manning a water stop, and my group stopped there. The original map said to cross the bridge over the river and head west on the street, and as we were leaving to head that way Gilbert yelled at us to come back. He said we should go under the bridge and take the south side of the trail instead, stopping at MoPac since there would not be water for a long way after that. While we were chatting, another group went by on the opposite side of the street and didn’t stop at the water stop. They went over the bridge, and we didn’t see them for a while.
So we took to the trail. It was peaceful except for a brief encounter with the stick lady. She yelled at us because we were passing to the left of a 3-or-4-wide group of slower folks and we crossed right in front of her. At least she didn’t smack anyone. It was nice to have light at the big dip by the 1.5 mile marker. That was when we realized just how much later than normal the start of this run was. We got water at MoPac and continued.
Late on Lake Austin Blvd, we caught the group that had passed us at the water stop. The way we had gone was a bit longer, and when we caught them they were all complaining about not having any water. (They were apparently expecting it there, even though the directions said it wasn’t going to be until the middle school.) There were a lot of runners coming the other direction on Enfield, so that was kind of fun.
A couple of us decided on the longer option and went left on Exposition to do a little out and back. That was very different with the light. Those hills seem much bigger when you can see them. There was a lot of road construction along there as well, so that really didn’t turn out to be a very fun section of road to add. The last water stop was at the middle school, about 5 km from the end. I picked up the pace after that and had a pretty strong finish.
I knocked out a bunch of strides at Auditorium Shores. My strategy is to do those until my legs feel natural again, and it worked out pretty well. I was a couple stretches late to the stretching session, but fortunately I wasn’t in charge today.
I ended up with a little over 15 miles and a pretty good pace, and my heart rate was nice and low. My legs feel good, so I’ll chalk this one up in the “W” column.