Saturday's Run

Saturday morning:

The alarm went off at 5:10 am... on a Saturday. Are you kidding me? After one quick snooze, I rolled out of bed, geared up and headed into Greenville to meet my fellow Team Tiara participants for our first long run together. We met up in the parking lot of Regions Bank and got our route sheets. The majority of us (training for halfs) would run 5 miles, the others would run 7. I had not run this particular route before and was looking forward to it. We began our run at 6:10 am and headed south on Main Street. I ran for about a mile and a half with the last person in the pack. She is training for the full and was struggling a bit with the pace of the others. At mile 2, we found that a local running store had put out a cooler, so three of us crossed the road and took advantage of it. Unfortunately, we all expected water and what we got was some unknown, sickly sweet substance that didn't resemble anything any of the 3 of us had ever tasted, nor would want to taste again. We headed down McDaniel Avenue, known for its vicious hill on the Reedy River 10K route, and thankfully we would not face that portion of it this morning. I began running with someone different and we would motivate each other for the remainder of our run. My knee started hurting some, but nothing that would make me stop. As we came upon the last mile and a half, we went back up Main Street and passed vendors of our local outdoor farmer's market setting up. A lady carried a basket of fresh peaches in front of me. It was all I could do not to reach out and grab one. When we got back to the parking lot where we were parked, my Garmin read 4.82 miles, so we did a lap and a half around the building so that we got our total 5miles. Later, we would both admit that, had been running on our own, we would have stopped at 4.82. I was pleased with my average pace of 11:10.
After our run, we waited for the 7 milers and then all visited the Saturday Market together. I cooled down with an iced mocha with soy milk and purchased some local blueberries that look amazing and fresh pasta bundles. Week One is in the books for training and so far, I'm loving this group!