Speed Play on the Trails

Late this morning Kevin and I went out on the Ossipee River Trails. Kevin is a fast walker and I love to walk the trails with him, but I wanted to run this morning. The Ossipee River trails loop around, criss cross, and over lap each other. There is a lot of trail out there for such a small area. I asked which trail Kevin planned to start on, then headed in a different direction with a plan to catch up with him from behind before he made it to the next intersection and decided where he'd be going next. I didn't want to miss him and not be able to find him, so I had to run faster than normal.

As I passed him from behind I found out where he'd be going next, and planned my next segment of the run so I'd come up from behind again. This time I made it a little more challenging for myself and had to run faster to make it work. I took a short rest each time we met up, then continued to set challenging goals for the upcoming segment. I saw my pace drop as low as 6:40 for a stretch, but spent a lot of time at a pace between 7 and 7:30 per mile. Easy running on these trails usually is about 10 minute pace for me, so I was getting some good speed work in.

This was true Fartlek... No plan, good hard work, and a lot of fun. My goal mileage was reached before we were out of the woods, so I got to walk back out with Kevin.