14~ Mile Long Run With Kenyan Way

It's been a while a tell ya. It's been a long time. It's been over half a year since I've done a long run outside. It might have been over a year and a half since I've done a long run with Kenyan Way. In any case that is way too long to stay away from good friends and challenging runs in the Bayou City heat. As you know I've been doing most of my runs indoors on the treadmill and I finally reached a point where I couldn't take any more. I needed a new stimulus and when Luis told me that he and Carlos were doing long runs with the Kenyan Way I couldn't resist. I had reached a point in the last 2 months where I was doing all of my runs indoors since Wade's injury. It gets pretty boring sometimes I tell ya. Not only that I kind of missed the competition and rivalry of training with a group of guys. So here I was at the Kenyan Way base.

I saw many familiar faces and saw many more new faces. It was as crowded as it has always been. For some reason I was pretty nostalgic about the whole thing. I spotted Lu and he told me Carlos would be joining us after 2 miles today. So then around 6am Sean started us off on our long run. It was good seeing familiar faces again. Andrew Sharenson and Sam Rodriguez were with us and it was good getting caught up with Andrew's progress as he starts to win various masters races around the area. After a few miles Carlos caught up with us.

So this was our route. We basically left the Kenyan Way base on Jackson Hill and traveled through the Heights neighborhood. Then we diverted through a trail in the Heights neighborhood and headed downtown. During this time Sam dropped off at the heights and continued on with his own pace. Andrew stuck around in the middle of our downtown run and then dropped off. So it was just me and Carlos with Luis leading the pace for the most part. Carlos held his own and I brought up the rear. Then we headed from downtown to the bayou and then back to the base. From there we started another loop of the bayou and then Lu, dropped off. From here it was just me and Carlos the last 3 miles. We finished up in great fashion as Carlos held his own.

Looking back on the splits on our run I can be nothing but pleased with how it turned out. First of all running outside on pavement and various other surfaces is an acquired skill for a treadmill runner. It isn't the same. So I didn't know what to expect. I kind of expected to be fine cardio-wise but for legs and feet to struggle a bit as it acclimated itself to the new stimuli that it was facing. With all of this being said, I pretty much had the best long run I've EVER had in the middle of the humid Houston summer, outside. That's a good sign. The humidity and heat never really bothered me too much. For the most part I just paid attention to how my legs were feeling and they were doing just fine.

Here are the splits. During the last 2 miles my Garmin died so I can only approximate how fast Carlos and I ran them.

7:15, 6:42, 5:58, 5:53, 5:59, 5:59, 6:02, 5:49, 6:07, 5:52, 5:52, 5:52, 5:25 for .11 miles then Garmin died. I believe Carlos and I were anywhere from 5:30-5:40 pace for the last 2 miles for an overall 6 minute pace long run.

As you can see we were under 6 minute pace for most of the run. Oh and did I mention Carlos is still in high school? I can't wait to run with the guys next Saturday.