The Accidental Pace

After checking the beep alert on my GPS watch at two miles, I thought it said 19:30, but I did a double take when I saw it actually said 18:30. That would be 9:15 minutes per mile for two miles. I was either having a good day or it was going to be an interminably exhausting run for me. It turned out to be a mixture of the two.

While doing a warm-up jog prior to the AREC nine mile run yesterday (Saturday, June 20), I noticed that my left knee wasn't tracking properly. I could feel a slight pain on the kneecap. It had been hurting on and off in the past week. I was hoping the warm-up would take care of the problem or just hope for the best when we embarked on the nine miler.

My breathing was good and it felt like I was running at about 80% effort most of the way. When the effort went to 90% I would just back off the pace. In past weeks I was running at about 60 to 70% of perceived effort to keep the pounding of my feet against the pavement to a minimum. But then I was running with somebody who enabled me to do that. Yesterday, she wasn't there, so I missed my pacer. I suppose I could have just slowed down and paced with someone else but for some reason I failed to do that. So away I went doing what I was not supposed to be doing: pushing the pace however slightly.

I caught up with this girl going up a hill and on the way down and most of the rest of the way I could feel her just slightly behind me. She would surge for a few dozen steps then back off, almost like doing a fartlek workout and she did this the whole way. Her style of running somehow gave me the push I needed to be able to run a tempo or anaerobic threshhold pace for the whole workout. The problem was I could feel my left knee and right ankle rebelling against the added stresses they were being subjected to. Somehow my joints managed to hang on to finish the workout at a pace I didn't plan on running. The pace for 9 miles was only 8 seconds per mile slower than the 10K I ran a couple of weeks ago. In other words I had a good aerobic day to the detriment of my aching joints and survived to tell about it.

(Also shown in the above photo is the girl who was running her fartlek workout. Thanks for the push Sophie)