Holy crap. I went for a run with my wife yesterday, and boy did I suffer! Whenever she takes the kids to Taekwando, she runs a 4+ mile out-and-back. She’s told me in the past how much she enjoys it, so yesterday I decided to join her.
In describing her route, she said that it’s both shady and fairly easy. Beyond her route description, she’s always made a big deal about how much faster I run than she does. I’ve found this hard to believe, especially since she’s been running her whole life, but she insisted.
Given the above, I figured I was in for a nice and easy run. A forgiving route, a slow partner, what more could I ask for? Unfortunately, my wife was wrong on all accounts.
Technically, the route is shady, but that’s at 5PM. Yesterday we tackled it at 10AM. Guess what? Not shady.
As for easy, it starts out fairly flat for a little better than half a mile before hitting a half mile descent. This didn’t seem like much going out, but it wasn’t much fun coming back. This initial dropoff was followed by a 0.85 mile climb to the turnaround point. Sure, we got to run back down, but I was spent by the time we reached the top.
Oh, and remember my supposedly slow wife? As it turns out, she’s significantly faster than advertised, and also handles hills much better than I do. In her defense, she claims that she’s never gotten through this particular route as fast as she did yesterday, but whatever… She certainly wore me out before leaving me in her dust.
In the final analysis, I went out way too fast. The route wasn’t that hard, I was just running too fast. After suffering up the back hill, I told my wife to go on ahead without me. I wanted to quit most of the way back, but I didn’t. I soldiered on, plodded my way up the final incline, and completed 4.01 miles at a pace of 11:31/mile. Not too bad (for me), but it certainly wasn’t pretty.
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