Galloway Run #4 from Inside Out Sports (Cary)

Today was the fourth Galloway run for the 2011 season. We ran from Inside Out Sports in Cary. We went a different route than usual from there, and the change of scenery was nice. Someone took a picture of our pace group before this morning's run. We were down a few people due to the holiday weekend, but it was still a good crowd across the different pace groups. We had big storms late yesterday afternoon, but things cleared up nicely for this morning's run, though it was very humid. (It did rain later in the morning, during breakfast at Panera.)

George is still curtailing his mileage due to IT Band Syndrome, but he saw us off this morning, then met up with us at the McDonald's bathroom stop. Since my pace (and our pace group's) is faster than I'd been doing on my own before the season started, I decided to hitch a ride with George about a mile down the road, where he'd decided to start his mileage with the group, continuing to the finish. I'm still having some issues falling behind the group, but I'm working on my mid-week training (which includes speed work) and weight (down 9.6 pounds--yay!). I was able to close the gap between the group and me a good bit this morning, and finished strong. I ended up doing 5.53 miles in 1:47:27, a 19:26 min. mile average pace. This included a warm up walk of about a quarter mile, followed by a run/walk ratio of 00:30/00:30. The slightly slower mileage buildup will pay off , I think. (The rest of the group did about 6.4 miles.)

My splits:

1) 20:19 (warmup)
2) 18:53
3) 19:19
4) 19:12
5) 19:25
0.53) 10:20 (19:26 pace)