My virgin run with the Federal Hill Runners

Today, I ran with the Federal Hill Runners.  I haven’t posted in a while because I was feeling like crap and I didn’t want to bore my readers with whining.  So now it’s all positive!

I will talk about a couple things that I have learned.  I can’t take off 3 days in a row, or even two, and expect to see improvements.  I need at least 30-45 min almost every day.  Also, I have learned that everybody is different.  My buddy E does best with every other day running.  Any more than that, and he gets injured.  If I try every other day, I get slower and slower, making me miserable.  There are dudes that run 180 miles per week!  That works out to 20 miles per day!  Assuming I could find that much time each day, that would probably make me hobble around like a 90 year-old.

I’ve been running in the heat the last few days; that plus  my refusal to turn on my AC, is acclimatizing me to the heat.  It’s purely for the sake of my training, I’m not cheap at all.  Honest!

Today’s run was pretty hot.  A lot of the people were complaining about it, but it didn’t really bother me too much.  There are various courses, depending on how fast you run.  The fastest run an extra part along the water that makes it about 7 miles.  The middle group doesn’t run that, but does run around Fort McHenry.  This course is about 6 miles.  And there is another group that skips both extra parts, which makes it more like 5 miles.

This makes everyone finish around the same time, which is very cool.  It’s kind of like hashing in that respect.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, check this out.  Ok, maybe that’s a stretch.  There’s no beer, or singing, or silliness, but they are both non-competitive, and all about socializing with fellow runners.

I ran with the middle group.   I was aware that “this isn’t a race”, so I treated it like a tempo run.  I didn’t want to look like a douche on my first run with them.  Hopefully I succeeded!  I really should put a map here, or a turn-by-turn, but I honestly don’t remember all the turns.  After I run the course a few times, I will post a map.

I didn’t bring my watch, but the pack of girls in front of me said that they did it in 40:something.  If I heard right, and it really was 6 miles, then that works out to a little under 7 min per mile!  Which would be really good for me, a real improvement over the mid 7’s that i had been doing.  If I misheard, then that is ok, too, I still had a good run.

Tomorrow is on the track with TWSS.  I’m going to try to run the Survivor Harbor 7 mile this weekend.  Alternatively, I could do the Patterson 4 miler.  Or I could do both.  The Patterson is in my hood, and only costs $2 for BRRC members, so it would be silly to not run it.