Saturday, May 5 - FIRST GROUP RUN! - 3 miles - 33:01 - I am not as pokey as I thought. I ran the 3 mile pace run with the AIDS Marathon group today. Figuratively, it was no sweat. Literally, there was lots of sweat, it was a hot day. There was quite crowd. Lots of people have hardly run at all (the coach asked for a show of hands) but in 6 months, they will complete a marathon.
The group run site I chose meets at a mall about 5 blocks south of THE mall. Today we ran in a big rectangle around the mall. They were setting up for the finish of the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk that ends tomorrow. Our friend for college is walking 60 miles from Fredrick MD to Washington DC. I will go back to the finish tomorrow to greet her. Today, the tents for refreshments and first aid were only skeletons. However today, the skeletons were surrounded by teams of marching bands and color guard troupes warming up. I don't know what that was about. We runners had to weave between the drum section to stay on course.
It turns out that my pedometer is calibrated very badly. At the finish line of the 3 mile run , my pedometer read 2.1 miles. That means it has been off for 3 tenths of a mile for every mile I've run. Last week, when I thought I had run 6 miles at a 17 minute mile pace (1 hour 45 min total), I had actually run 8.5+ miles at about a 12:30 minute mile pace.
That explains a lot:

1. Shin splints. Shin splints are about overpronating (rolling foot in too much) and adding too many miles too fast. I got better shoes that should help with the overpronating, but every time I thought I was adding 1 mile, I was really adding 1.3 miles. Check out Runnersworld.com for more on shin splints. Pretty soon I will be an expert on shins.
2. The distance between the Capital and the Lincoln Memorial. I thought it was more than two miles. It's 3 miles.
3. The reason today's 3 miles was a piece of cake (warm cake).

So, I'm not super pokey. I am not super fast either. I am right in the middle and because I have the fancy watch (and know how to program it) I was nominated pace group leader by the other runners in the middle. There were actually about 30 people today who finished between 11 and 11:30 minute miles. We've been broken up into groups of 10 and I'll run with those 10 people for the next 6 months. I suggested we have more than one pace group leader, now there are three. Here we go . . . . .

End of May - I got a bit distracted and didn't keep up the journal so well. Not too much happened on the group runs in the end of May - except rain. The first run in the rain is a learning experience. The second run is comforting. The third is annoying. Oh well, by August, I'll be doing rain dances.

May 31st, midweek run - I acquired a little handheld camera on the 31st and took it with me to the PIRG vs. Common Cause softball game (we wupped 'um) and then on my run back. Made the run a little slow but very fun - pictures below. Click on any thumbnail to view the larger version. If you want to see more pictures, check out my Washington DC photo page or my California photo album.