The next level.

This morning, I did my 3rd running of the Annapolis Striders' Cherry Pit 10-miler. I went in with fairly low expectations, which is typical for this race. Cherry Pit comes about a month after the B&A Half-Marathon. After spending the winter in half-marathon training, I tend to do almost no running between these two races. This year was a little different, since I ran the Rock 'n' Roll DC half two weeks ago. Still, one run- even a big one- hardly counts as "training." My only goal going into this race was to beat last year's time: 1:47:31.

I've been a little sick the past few days, so I started out the race feeling pretty lousy. In the second mile, I caught up with a couple friends from last summer's marathon training group, Mary and Meghan. They took my mind off things for a couple miles, but I found myself struggling to maintain their pace and fell back. A mile or so later, I looked to my left and realized I was running next to another training buddy, Mike. We wound up sticking together for the rest of the race, and even caught up to Mary and Meghan.

Cherry Pit is not an easy race (read: HILLS), but having good company made it much easier. At mile 9, I looked at my watch, saw 1:31, and realized that I was on pace to beat last year's time by several minutes. I mentioned this to Mike and he said "I think you and I lucked out running into each other." He was right! I finished the race in 1:41:53, a new PR and almost 6 minutes faster than last year.

When I got home, I got another happy surprise. I plugged my Nike+ watch into my computer and learned that I had earned a new level in their running software. Nike+ assigns levels based on your mileage, and the levels get exponentially farther apart as you go along. They are:


Yellow (0-49km, 0-30mi)
Orange (50-249km, 31-154mi)
Green (250-999km, 155-620mi)
Blue (1,000-2,499km, 621-1,552mi)
Purple (2,500-4,999km, 1553-3,106mi)
Black (over 5,000km or 3,107mi)

As of today, I am now on purple! That's over 1500 miles run since I started with Nike+ in 2007, with the bulk of those miles in the last 3 years. The levels aren't good for anything other than bragging rights, but I'll take it!