Back to my running timeline, summer of 2013
The next few weeks had nothing really special. I kept running every other day as I just wasn't able to run on back to back days. But I was steady, one week I ran 3 times, the other week I ran 4 times, or sometimes would take a couple days off and run 3 times in back to back weeks, but I kept at it. Even got my oldest son to do a few runs with me...
I didn't even see entering a race as an option at the time since I didn't really feel ready to drop money for a medal but I wanted to test myself. Mid July I planned to head out on a Thursday morning before work and see how fast I could run a 5K. Nothing else but going all out over 5 kilometers.
I did that test on July 11th and ran a 5K in 22:50, or an average pace of 4:34/km (7:21/mile). Again, I was pretty pleased with that, I was improving...
My three weeks of summer vacation came, around the end of July, beginning of August and I kept on running every other day and even did a couple of back to back days. The idea of someday running to my dojo and back crept into my mind. I knew it was about a 13 km round trip but it kinda scared me since now I wouldn't be running around the neighborhood but on a strainght line out and back. I remember that I wanted to get it done before Labour day weekend.
I still didn't really have a formal training plan in place but I was learning a bit every week. I had done
my first intervals (6x 400m) around the beginning of July and then
again around the end of July (8x 400m). Interesting to see how much faster I was hitting my splits just 3 weeks later, even though I did two more reps in that second workout.
Had my first real hill workout on July 31st and not too sure why, but it's not showing real elevation on the map on Garmin Connect by I tell ya, that hill is a b*tch!
These little workout kinda moved me toward the idea that I could, someday, want to try my feet in a real race. I had passed on a local 5K/10K at the beginning of July because I didn't feel ready, but by the end of July, I was beginning to feel ready to enter one. I picked a very local race, a 10K and on August 1st or about, I signed up for that race that was to be held on August 18th. In retrospect, that didn't give me much time to put a training plan in place but frankly, I didn't care much about training plans and such back then. I was still freestyling it, going with the flow, trying stuff.
Before that race was to happen, Strava had another pace based challenged coming in early August, the ROLL Recovery R8K. I
ran that one on my own on Agust 5th, clocking in 8 km in 37:32 for an average pace of 4:41/km (7:33/mile). That was another new experience to me. 8 kilometers is an odd distance. You have the feeling you want to push like a 5K but that last 3 km kills ya, especially when you're still a newbie...
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