Cold and windy and hills!

For the first time in months, I went on a decent sized group run. As I've mentioned before, I belong to a group called StL Runners, from Meetup.com. There is a run that happens every Tuesday, and starting last January, I was joining this run pretty regularly. In general, the run happens somewhere different every week, except in the winter when it gets dark really early, and then it defaults at Forest Park. I was running with them most of the spring, but then I had a summer class that prevented me from continuing. I joined a few times after the class was over, but then had to stop again because of my stress fracture.
So, this was the first time in quite a while. There ended up being 11 of us, which is a large group for the run anyway, and especially considering the weather last night. It was only about 35 degrees, and it was very windy, making it even colder. My friend Joe came along and the run's originators, Tim and Glenn, were there. I hadn't seen either of them in a while, so that was really nice.
We didn't do the normal Forest Park loop, due to the fact that several people joining us weren't really up for that distance, and they didn't know the park well enough to shortcut. So, Tim created a different route that took us past the visitor's center to drop people off at about 3 miles. This route involved running up the hill by the art museum, which is a pretty good hill. I was once again pleased to see that my hill training helped with this.
Several people stopped after the 3 miles and then we continued on. A few more stopped at about 3.5 miles then the rest of continued on to finish the loop. This involved going up that hill again. And I made it. It was a little rough, but I made it! Progress revealed!


Distance: 5.38 miles

Average Pace: 10:28 min/mi

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