I got a great piece of news in my inbox the other day; the race route for the Hypo Half Marathon in Feb is going to be an out and back course from Shearwater! Yay, that's only 3kms from my house! The race director mentioned a portion of it was a bit "hilly" and, having run that trail a few times I can attest that "pancake flat" would be a more accurate description. Not sure if this guy was making a joke, trying to egg people on to get out a train on the trail beforehand, or what, I spoke with a coworker who's taking part in the Running Room clinic for the half marathon. She wasn't sure what he meant either, so I said I would run most of the route this weekend.
I got out late in the day Saturday, but thankfully the sun had warmed the temperature up a bit so I didn't have to wear gloves or a toque. I took off at a steady pace until I hit the trail at the 2.75km mark. Then I worked on being faster or meeting my pace goal of 7:10 for the next 5kms. I got to the end of the trail, where the main road meets the division between this trail and another separate trail system, and decided that any hills were going to be met in the subdivisions off that main road. That means only 4km can have any kind of hill, and knowing the area, that's nothing to get too concerned about. The snow started falling as I made my way back making a pretty scene over the lakes, but I was determined to get a negative split on this run so I pushed myself past my 2.5k walk break and went straight out until I was 1km from the trail end. I did an extra loop around a small road to make sure I would hit my 16kms and finished at 1:57. Not bad, considering it took that long to do 14kms last weekend. Now if I can only keep working on my speed, I should be able to pull off that 2:10 or better I'm hoping for. Good thing I love trails :-)
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