Lesson of the Day: Run With Fast Friends

For anyone that has been following my running journey the past few weeks (or any of you that were (un)fortunate enough to hear my rants and raves in person), you are well aware by now of my thoughts on "speed" (relative term here) and pushing my pace.  If you suggest I increase my pace at all, this will likely be my reaction:

yeah, no.

I've been running with my friend Emily since November and while it's safe to say that we're officially running buddies, it's also safe to say that she is 110% a faster runner than me.  As we get further into our training together, she slowly (and slyly) picks up the pace a little beyond the glacial pace that I tend to keep us at.  Tonight I must have been drunk off my Gu Chomps because I let her pace us for two of the three miles we ran.  And check out these splits:

Can you guess who paced mile 2?

9:52 mile??  I don't think I have ever seen a single digit pace on my watch ever.  I thought my Garmin was playing tricks on me when it hovered around 9:30 for far longer than my brain thought it should.  I know for a fact that my legs have never seen a pace like that in all of their 23 years.  Sad, but probably actually true.

The lesson I learned today: run with friends who run faster than me.  And let them pace the run.  I can run faster than I think.  It will probably suck and I'll want to give up and go back to my comfortable pace, but at the end I'll feel accomplished.  And look at that -- I didn't keel over and die like I imagined.

Second lesson learned today:  Running is way more fun when you dress the same as your running buddy.  And even more fun when you didn't even do it on purpose

Moral of the story: You officially have a running buddy for life when your attire begins to match unintentionally

Real moral of the story: It's crazy what you're capable of when you actually push yourself!