All Black 16 miler (2:02:45) 7:42 pace This was by far my best performance of the year. Runs where I feel this good truly make me want to come back for more and more. Today was picture day with the All Blacks. Greg's new role as one of the overall team coaches has him running with different teams each week. Of course Greg bleeds black and decided to take his picture and run with us. Two seconds before we are headed out the door.. my Garmin beeps saying it had a low battery. So I was forced to break out the ironman and go old school with no GPS. Shortly before we were taking off Greg asks if would stay with him. Of course I said. He had plans on breaking off and not doing the extra 4 miles that only the blacks were doing. So were running along roughly at 8:15's and almost right away we lost site of the back of the pack blacks. I didnt mind.. Greg is one of my favorite friends to run with and I normally end up by myself anyways. His knowledge is truly unmatched in the area and I always learn something new during our runs. I had a blast!! Greg breaks off somewhere near the 10k mark and I was feeling pretty good and decided to drop it down a bit. Without my GPS and on turf that I dont normally run.. I had no clue how fast I was running. For lack of a better term.. I will call it comfortably hard. The extra 4 miles had us jaunting through all the hilly areas of the UofR campus. No worries. I was feeling great!! As I was exiting the area and heading over to 3 Chopt.. I saw Shannon doing her coaching gig directing Red Bellied Cooters as to where to run. I said "hey girl" and went about my way. I think she was somewhat surprised to see me among her group. Somewhere on Grove.. I passed JK smooth talking all the Cooter girls at one of the HMTT sag stops. I yelled something not so funny like "dirty old Cooter" and kept going. Lol.. JK jumped on his tempo horse and tracked me down. Nice speed teammate! I slowed my pace just a wee after I saw he was coming for me and we ran together for a bit until he bailed out. He proceeded to tell me how he had yelled at some All Black dudes because they darted out in front of car thinking they were super heros. John is a great friend and all around good guy. Its always fun to run into good friends when your not expecting it. I continue onwards to Locke and Grove and I spot the back the pack Black teamers.. I thought to myself wow they were in striking range. I was honestly shocked when I saw that I had made up all the ground that the 8:15's had caused. I caught Scott and Nick and ran a few miles with them until I decided to peel out a bit further leaving them behind.. I was closing in on the next pack for the remaining mile or so but I just couldnt catch them coming up the Boulevard bridge leading into the stadium. This is one of the runs where Im truly sad to not be able to see my splits. I had blazed the middle section and I will never know how fast I ran it. I guess it doesnt matter. Start to finish I felt "in the zone". Could not be any happier than I am right now with my training. Onwards Crash | 