I ran with an angel

Happy Thanksgiving! This morning I did my own personal Turkey Trot. It was a beautiful cloudy morning, perfect temp.

I love when the clouds look like this and you can tell that it is raining but it evaporates before it hits the ground, like this (don't quote my scientific explanation of this cloud formation!)

So this morning I began my first official training run for a half I decided to do at the end of January. It was a 4 mile tempo run: one easy warm up mile, 2 miles at a 9:12 pace and a cool down mile. I started out and immediately noticed this cloud formation similar to the ones above but it looked like a giant angel hovering over me as I ran. For the first mile this "angel" was with me and it was the coolest thing! It made me think of my mom.

I am excited to train for this half with my Garmin because the last half I did, I didn't have this luxury. So after talking with my running guru I played with the data fields on my watch to make the most of my training. The 4 fields I have on there are time, distance, time of day and average pace.

The first mile was fine, it was my warm up and I averaged a pace of 11:05. Then once I hit mile 2 I picked up the pace but that average pace box wasn't coming down like I thought it should. I knew I was running fast but it only creeped down about 5 seconds. What the heck! Then I realized it was telling me my average pace for my entire run, not each mile or lap. So I was irritated that I didn't know if I was hitting my target pace of 9:12 for those 2 miles. So I just kept running hard. Slowing down for that last mile felt SO good! I was winded! When I got home I checked out what my pace was, here is how it broke down:

mile 1 - 11:05

mile 2 - 8:45

mile 3 - 9:07

mile 4 - 11:09

I was happy with that! I just need to play with the data fields so that I can have it tell me my average pace for the current lap. Hmmm, I wonder where I put the instruction book...