Easy Week

This weekend was an Easy Week. Saturday worked out well, because there was the VanRun Foodbank fun run, which was 9.5 k. I did the first eight kind of fast (4:30 to 4:40/km) until I caught up with a friend who had started earlier than me, and then just cruised in at the end.

Today I went out with the same friend for a 20K. He has been off sick (running a few days a week at most) for a couple of months, so he needed a very easy long run. We really took it slow, so at times it felt like we might as well just walk, but in the end it turned out that we had averaged a 5:46/km pace. With such a slow run, I didn't feel even slightly tired or sore (though it did give me a good appetite for lunch). The funny thing that occurred to me after lunch was that the glacial pace we were running at, was only 11 seconds slower than my 10K race pace in April, and faster than any 10K training run I had managed to run up to that point.

Back in April, when I ran the Sun Run as my first race ever, I was hoping to get under one hour. I had never achieved that before. My best time was 62 minutes. I pushed as hard as I could and did it in 55 something, which was a 5:36 pace. I was so stoked. I was fast! Now the same pace for twice the distance seems to be, quite literally, a walk in the park. It's weird and wonderful to watch how the body changes.