My sis and I finally made it to our first official LA Leggers’ training run for the LA Marathon. I say first, because I haven’t been good about waking early enough to meet with the Leggers. Eep! Determined not to miss it again, last Saturday, we caravanned with our friend (and Leggers’ Pace Leader, Ann); this meant that we had accountability via third-party (which worked) and we had minutes to spare when we arrived at the Santa Monica Senior Center, the meeting point.

Anyway, sis and I had planned on joining the 12 min/mile pace group (or 12′s) but en route, I was already thinking that it might be too-fast-of-a-group to join, considering we had missed a few key training runs and the prescribed mileage for that morning was 16. I thought of joining the 13′s, but wasn’t too keen on their run/walk intervals so the next logical choice was join the 12.5′s (12:30 min/mile average pace).

Running with a pack — where there was barely 3 feet of space between you and the person in front of you — was definitely an odd experience at first. It felt like I might nip the heel of the person in front of me but was able to maintain my distance, whilst still keeping up with the pace. I guess I experienced my first real sensation of drafting since the first eight miles were rather effortless, despite having an average moving pace of 11:30 min/mile (I normally do my long runs at around 12 – 13 min/mile).

My sis and I fell back at the restroom break around mile 8 (we were in Marina del Rey by then). Thankfully, one of the pace leaders (she was the sweep) stayed with us until the turn around and ’til we rejoined the group around mile 12 (my sis fell even further back around mile 10, though.) It was around mile 13 that I was feeling the burn and finally between miles 14 and 15, I dropped off and walked the rest of the way back with another lady in our group who was having IT Band problems.

When we got back to the Senior Center, I was still short about .45 miles so I turned around and searched for my sis (though, that was after a few minutes of chatting and stretching, with Ann). I didn’t have to double-back too far to find my sis (who walked the rest of the way!) and when we returned, my watch read 16.14mi… Success!

I’m glad we got to do the mileage and am even more excited to have finally made a training run with the LA Leggers. I will definitely need to keep up with this, especially since I really want to do well in LA next year. For reals. LOL.

Check out my run via Garmin Connect. I wasn’t able to take any photos, but I do have two that I took, the first one was en route (you wouldn’t be able to tell that I took that photo in the morning!) and the other was when I arrived at the Senior Center lawn (where the LA Leggers pace groups assemble).

405 North; En route to Santa Monica

LA Leggers Pace Groups