Beware of the old lady with the stick!

Week 8 - Galloway training

• Weather: 72, overcast, 69% humidity (very nice day to run)
• Location: Omega Sports
• Duration: 12 miles (intervals) in 2:41

What an insane run! We ran all over North Raleigh. Starting at Omega Sports in North Hills Shopping center, through some neighborhoods, over to the greenway trails, linked up to the Shelley Lake trail, and back down Six Forks Road. Once back at North Hills those who are running 12 miles turned back around, up to Dunkin Doughnuts and back to Omega for the final 2 miles.

Running with the Kewl Runners (name of our pace group) has its challenges. It's an 11:30 pace group but we are constantly running between 12:30-13 min/miles. Finally, me and Dina ran up to the front of our immense group of 50 members and became pace leaders for a few intervals....not a good job for us. The group leaders kept yelling for us to slow down if we got any faster then 12:30. We asked Ron (the director) about the groups pace and he told us that 11:30 is the race pace so on long runs we should be running slower. AND that makes sense, however, 13 min/miles is just agony for me. So in two weeks, I am moving up to the 11:00 min/mile pace group. Let's see how that one fits.

During the Galloway runs, we come across bikers, other runners, and walkers. We have been instructed to be courteous and yield the trail way. However, as good as we may be, we usually hear objections from some trail users. This Saturday was no exception. As we are making our way up to Shelley Lake, we happened upon this older lady holding a tuner style radio to her ear, trash bag, and long stick. She is swinging the stick wildly from side to side (making herself a human pendulum) and yelling that she is "protecting [her] space". She whacked a few runners as they passed her. Talk about comfort zone, hers took up most of the trail way. Needless to say, she has been the first person to actually assault some of the runners. I could only say "wow, I'm blogging this one" and the ladies in front of me burst into laughs.

Injury Report:

• Anne sustained an ankle injury around mile 5. She felt better by Sunday and we ran and extra 2 miles.
• Christa has been diagnosed with Achilles tendinitis and has to stay off of it for two weeks
• Jason, Planters Facilities, has not returned to running yet.