After a nice run on Wednesday, I had a planned day off on Thursday and an uninteneded day off on Friday due to a late night at work. Today was my first group run for my CARA half-marathon training program. We meet at 8am on the lakefront path at Montrose Ave and there are several different groups based on page (from 7:30/mile to 12:00/mile).

I decided to run with the 8:30 group. 8;30 is a little bit fast for me (I'm usually between 8:40 and 9:00 for my comfortable runs), but I was able to run more than five miles on Wednesday under 8:30. Plus, I sort of have a time goal for the half-marathon of better than an hour and fifty-one minutes, which is 8:30 pace. I figured since the distance isn't really going to be a problem for the half-marathon training, I should bump my pace.

I'm glad that I did. For one, I like my group and there are only 8 runners in it. The 9:00 group had at least 15 (the slower groups between 10:00 and 12:00 had dozens of runners). Fortunately, our pace is a bit slower than 8:30 and today we went our prescribed 5 miles at around 8;40. I'm already looking forward to our 6 miles next week.

For the route, we just followed the lakefront path from Montrose south to Diversey, then turned around. We have a "group leader" with a GPS watch so our milage will always be accurate.

Today: 5.03 miles at 8:40 pace
This week: 19.98 miles