My October 2022 Running and Walking Report

In October my running stats were pretty much commensurate with those of the previous few months...just plodding along, exercising every day.  The major difference was that, with the onset of the fall running race season here in northern Florida, I was able to enter a couple of middle-distance races here in Gainesville, both 10K (6.2 miles): the Tom Walker Preview on 10/15 and the Run the Good Race on 10/22.  Both were held on Saturday mornings, the first out on the Hawthorne Trail and the other in the office park and residential area around North Florida Regional Medical Center.  I ran both seeking to establish a reasonable.pace for my age, finishing with times of 1:04:55 and 1:03:20, respectively.  My legs were sore in the immediate hours and days following each race...my training has been on soft, level surfaces, and the hard, hilly asphalt surfaces in these races were a bit uncomfortable.  I thought maybe I should train more under these conditions for future events and then concluded that I don't want to overtrain and overstress the soft connective tissue...a problem plaguing athletes in today's "only winning matters" sports world.  In November, there will be two half-marathons (13.1 miles) offered, both along that same Hawthorne Trail...I've already signed up for the first on Sunday the 6th and if all goes well, might try out the second one two weeks later.   As for my walking, since I naturally rack up the mileage due to my generally active lifestyle, I haven't been measuring it for months, although I easily average several miles a day.  Oh, with regard to that upcoming half-marathon on November 6th, the Florida Track Club is organizing it and they have included pacer runners based on different finishing times...the slowest is running at a 2 hours 20 minutes pace.  My plan is to run just behind that pacer...it should alleviate a lot of the pacing problems I had when I ran the preview race earlier this month.  Hopefully, the weather will hold up for that morning...