With a little help from my friends

As I was stressing out about having enough time for friends and tri training, the obvious finally hit me.  Of course!  Invite my friends to work out with me sometimes!  Then we can spend time together, and I get my training time in.  I also get to share one of my interests with someone I care about.  Nice!

So yesterday, I asked one of my girl friends to go to the gym with me.  She's a total eliptical lover, so she hit an eliptical machine while I hopped on a stationary bike.  My goal was to do a bike+run brick, but after the bike ride (24 minute program -> 6.25 miles), my friend was just about finished with her workout.  So, I hopped on the treadmill to run just one mile at a good pace.

The run felt really good after getting all warmed up on the bike.  I ran at a 9:15 mile pace, which is slow compared to what I used to run in high school, but it feels pretty fast at my current fitness level.  I'll have to improve it, though, if I want to meet my goal of finishing the 5 mile run portion of the tri in 45 minutes.

During my last quarter mile, my friend got on the treadmill next to me and ran until I was done with my mile.  It turns out, she was the number 17 girls runner in high school track for the state of California ten years ago.  Unfortunately, a hip injury made her stop running and for fear of reinjury, she hasn't run since high school.  Last night was the first time in nearly 10 years.  She said it felt really good.  Cool, huh?