The Rabbits of Sutton Woods

Time: 60:55
Distance: 9 miles

I'm not exactly sure how far to call this run because it started out very slow and ended uptempo. Scotty D and I drove away from the west side in search of a place to run that would block some of northern wind this evening. We considered the GT (grass track) or Sutton Woods. We settled on the latter because it provides a 1.5 mile soft(er) surface loop and wind blockage. Both of us were pretty stiff at the start of the run and we gradually eased into a few opening loops around the pond. The pace was gradually picking up (maybe it was just getting darker and we were running the same pace) and my legs were feeling pretty good. After looping through the frisbee golf course we headed over to Griffin Park and found a couple select soccer teams practicing. We figured they were a select team because nobody would willingly participate in 30 degree weather for giggles.

We started running around the soccer fields because they were lit for the soccer practices. The fields are built on three levels which gave us a few 15 meter bursts of high-knees on our roughly 1,000 meter loop. The pace continued to drop and we ran our last circuit in 3:52 which was significantly faster than our first 4 or 5. Scotty and I had both read an article in this month's Running Times about learning from elites. One observation the author makes is how elites vary the pace of their runs greatly from run to run and during runs. I figure I could start incorporating that into my running. For instance, I could start out a pace comfortable to DeCoste or Da WeeMan and end at a pace consistent with Bekele or Geb.