Noble 8

Aah, another great day of running in the wind of Oklahoma. Just south of Norman, along OK-77, is a little town called Noble. Today's run took me out my front door onto OK-77 and southward to Noble, four miles away, where I then turned around and returned home. This is what I will for now on refer to as the Noble 8. Today's run was a simple out and back straight shot with some hills during the middle miles. Yes, we do have some hills here in Oklahoma! It's not ALL flat.

The temperature for today's outing started at 68 and rose to 73 by the end. The wind at the beginning was a 26 mph wind out of the South, straight into my face for the first four miles. And once again, wouldn't you figure, I turn around to head home and the wind is reduced to a gentle breeze, if existent at all.

My run actually started out as a fast walk heading into the wind. For much of the first 2 to 3 miles I was feeling the fatigue in my shins, a result from pushing myself hard in yesterday's 5k loop. However, somewhere in the latter stages of the third mile I started to feel loosened up and ready to go. After having reached the halfway point and making my way back, after mile 5 I decided to work in some speed work. Sure, it would have been nice to have the wind help push me home, but as I said, it pretty much died off when I turned around. Anyway, starting at the beginning of mile 6 I set out to run for 6 utility poles and then do a 3 pole recovery walk. I went on to do this for a total of 5 times. Feeling good about that I then upped the ante and ran for 8 utility poles and walked for 4. I did the 8/4 utility pole cycle 3 times. This put me at about 7.5 miles. As I was starting up a fourth cycle I decided to just go ahead and run the rest of the way to complete the 8 miles. At the conclusion of the 8 miles I still had another .17 miles to get back home so I used that to do a slower cool down walk. Here are the mileage splits for today's Noble 8:

Mile 1: 14:47
Mile 2: 14:42
Mile 3: 14:29
Mile 4: 14:08
Mile 5: 14:02
Mile 6: 11:34
Mile 7: 11:50
Mile 8: 11:27
Mile .17: 2:25 (14:45 pace)

The final three miles are the three fastest miles I have run to date. Almost all of my actual running during these three miles was at a sub 11:00 pace. During the final .5 mile run I had about a tenth of a mile stretch where I sustained a pace sub 10:00. I was excited to see myself achieve these paces and not feel exhausted and totally spent at the conclusion of my 8 miles.

I have two more runs this week, a short 2 miler and then a 9 miler on Saturday that I will be contributing my miles to the family multi-state fitness group. Will check in again this weekend.