"It'll be 11-12 minutes a mile," he said. Since I had not run sustained hills for a long time I decided to pace him. Tom who was walking with me when Wally came by asked the question: "I wonder why he didn't ask me?"
"Tom, he want to run not walk the thing!" Of course the real reason is that Tom is too fast and Wally wanted a pacer that would be happy to really run slow. That has my name written all over it.
I ran a bit more to get in a total of 10 minutes before the club run started.
Years ago I set what was then a club record on this very course, being the first WVJS runner to break 26 minutes. I believe I ran 25:40 in what was basically a solo effort after the first two miles. Today we hit the two mile point a minute faster than my all time PR so we were going really slow. Once we started up the big uphill we got even slower with Wally verging on a fast walk at times. I wish I could say I minded but frankly the glacial pace was good for my calf that I pulled 4 times in 2008. Today, I felt nada. No problems. I even drifted off course preferring to run the walking trail that runs roughly parallel to highway 9.
But I kept Wally in site and finally led him back downhill to the finish in a hair over 51 minutes. It was an all time PW for me.
My running total was 61 minutes of slow. Tomorrow if the warrior God Sciatica is willing, I will hammer a bit.
*Postscript
Wally suffered some chest pains after the run and drove himself to the emergency room at Kaiser. Turns out he was kept overnight for observation which pissed him off because he wanted to make breakfast on Sunday with the guys. Found out today that he had suffered a mild heart attack. He already has six stents and may have already had a heart attack some years back. But he fighting against genetics. The male side of his family dies of heart disease and he has already lived longer than any of them.
Chance of a a bypass in the future.
This is one tough guy. Six stents, several heart attacks. He'll be back out there, running.
No comments:
Post a Comment