Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Georgetown - Capitol Hill - Tempo

Time: 1:46
Distance: 14.96 miles (can't bring myself to round up...)
Effort: Hard
Body: Good
Weather: Partly Cloudy & Cool


Left the hotel running late to meet Matt A. down on the Mall, where he was playing ultimate. Was planning on doing some tempo work today anyway, but being late made me jump into it straight away with no w/u.

Ran five miles at tempo pace from my Glover Park hotel to the Capitol reflecting pool.  The route was on residential streets for the first two miles (with cars, street crossings and peds), then three miles of bike paths (with a couple of major street crossings) and the gravel paths along the Mall. Made one stop to watch a snippet of another ultimate game to see if I knew anyone playing (I didn't).  I played for a bunch of years in the 1990s on an ultimate club team here in D.C.  The first five miles went like this:  6:10; 5:49; 5:48; 6:14; 5:51.

After that, I ran a circuitous route around Capitol Hill, including a jaunt over by the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, looking for Matt  No dice. I knew I was late, so I headed over to his place near Lincoln Park and met up with him and CS, just as they were about to have dinner. I was 8.5 miles into the run at this point, which meant it was the perfect time to stop, chat for 45 minutes and have a beer.

Around 9 p.m., I headed out and ran easy back toward the Capitol building, down the Mall, past the Washington Monument, the WWII and Lincoln Memorials, past the Kennedy Center, along the Potomac River, up Rock Creek Parkway and then through Georgetown to get back to my hotel.  For much of the run back I had hunger pangs like I haven't had in ages. I had little but calories on my mind. Strange, since I had a big lunch. Some local pizza and a couple of IPAs took care of that problem!

Average pace for the full run was 7:01.  A whopping 348 feet of elevation gain.

No comments:

Post a Comment