Welcome to 10 Miles

What a way to welcome double digit mileage...temps in the low 30's and ice/snow still covering parts of our path.  Everyone's back from break and hunkering down for some serious training runs since we're now past the halfway point.

As you can see from the map, this was quite the route. We headed up 16th Street toward Maryland and turned down into the Park once we got close to Walter Reed. Unfortunately one of the faster groups missed the turned and ended up logging some extra credit. Bummer!

The slog up 16th street is MAJOR. It's a consistent and irritating accent for 4-5 miles. To top it off, there were still icy/snowy patches which caused us to be extra cautious.

We all welcomed the turn down into the Park where the hills were more rolling and the overall path was more varied. Wow...the Park is just so beautiful. It's quiet, but for the sound of the rolling water and your feet pounding down the road.

At mile 9 we turned the corner and there it was --- my nemesis --- the Calvert Hill. Drat. I thought we weren't doing it today. One of my fellow runners and I just looked at each other and pushed forward. Our goal as always is just to get to the top without walking or hitting the wall. This week, we beat the hill again. Doing all this hill work sure better pay off come race day.

After our run we gathered at Starbucks to warm up and plan for next week's JFK 20. It's a club race, but we're using it as a training run. Those of us running Miami will begin tapering and pulling back our training. That means we'll only run 10 miles next week vs the full 20k.