A good friend and running buddy of mine is the race director of a marathon/half marathon that’s coming up in a couple weeks.

She was looking for some volunteers to distribute flyers to homes along the race route, letting the residents know about road closures and delays on race day.

Another friend decided we could help out while getting in our long run for the week. We wanted to run about 12 miles, so we took some neighborhoods farthest from our meeting point.

It wasn’t particularly a fast run as we had a few stops off the trail into neighborhoods where we walked from house to house leaving our notes, but we certainly covered a lot of distance!

Once we got to the end of our route I ran the rest of the way back. One of the ladies in our little group was having some hamstring trouble, and the other two decided to walk back with her rather than run with me. I’m a little faster than they are. I would have slowed to their pace to have company, but they still chose to walk.

Despite being alone without headphones, it was a nice day and I enjoyed my run!

Here is where I’ll add yet another task to my list. USJogger declared a virtual 5K this weekend for Non-Runner Nancy – a blogger and virtual race director who has learned some problems she’s been having may force her to stop running all together.

I’m going to dedicate 3.16 of my later miles to the Freakishly Flexible 5K.

During my last mile, I happened to pause my Garmin after already waiting a little while at a particularly long stoplight. I’ve got the ForeRunner 201. I set it to lap every mile, but it resets to a new lap any time I pause. The partial mile was a good thing, though. I would up with .16 from the light to my car, so I added that to the last three full miles to finish out my 5K.

Mile 1: 10:30
Mile 2: 10:19
Mile 3: 10:27
.16: 1:40

Total: 32:56

While it’s well below my average 5K pace, it’s not bad for the tail end of a 12-mile run!