Notes
Today’s planned group run was the 11.2-mile main drive loop in Percy Warner Park, which is quite challenging. Since my schedule called for 14 to 16 miles total I got there a little early and completed just over three miles in Belle Meade before joining the group in the park.
I mentioned on Friday that I had been feeling some soreness in right shin (shin splints), so this morning I decided to run in my old clunky and cushy Nike Vomeros since we would be doing so many hills in the park. This turned out to be a good decision and my leg felt pretty good. However, for the record, I now hate how these shoes feel compared to my Saucony Kinvaras. Gotta be diligent in my leg exercises so I can get out of these things as soon as possible on hilly runs.
Dan led our group run, and his strategy today was to run very easy on the downhill and flat portions, but push the pace on the uphills to build strength. Also, right at the start Dan told the group that he would be counting the hills we ran the loop today. This led to a persistent debate about what counted as a hill. As you can see from the elevation chart below, Percy Warner Park is not lacking in hills…
Even though the humidity was very high this morning after rains last night, I felt fantastic throughout the run today. I pushed pretty hard up most of the hills, even the daunting, named ones like 3-mile-hill, 7-mile-hill, and 9-mile hill (miles 6, 10, and 12 on the chart above). This was very encouraging after my miserable trail run earlier in the week in the same park.
When we came to end Dan and the group had counted 21 total hills in the park (very unscientific), which is pretty good in only 11.2-miles. For my entire route (including warmup miles) this equated to over 2,000 ft of cumulative elevation gain. My final total was 14.29-miles completed with an 8:48 average pace per mile.
Beast Mode…ON!