Some of the Heathen have been a-running since August, and not because anyone’s chasing us. The stated goal is the completion of the Wurstfest Five Miler a week from Saturday (where, it is said, they hand you sausage and beer upon completion; that’s our kind of race), but the real point is banishing the mid-30s expansion that’s happened to all of our waistlines (shut up, Lindsey). I’ve run before, and even once did a 5K in under 30, but it’s been a long time, and at the start of this I was easily in the worst shape of my life.

Even so, in the last week or so, I’ve noticed a drastic drop in the “suck” of running, and some actual improvements in time and performance, so I’m ready to start talking about it in public to reinforce the social conditioning aspects of this process.

Last Friday we did the loop off White Oak, which is about 2.1 miles; since it’s short, we did it twice. I was pleased to discover my current alternating pace (run 4, walk 2) kept me more or less up with Lindsey, at least until I hit some sort of wall around 2 miles in. The final damage was something over 4 miles in something under an hour, even with my wall-hitting halfway through. The previous acknowledged time was the Memorial Loop at about a 12-minute pace, even with walking 1/3 of the time, so it was within tolerances especially factoring in the weird “hills” they have at White Oak.

We did some walking between then and yesterday to rest from the mileage increase, but when running time came last night, Mrs Heathen was feeling ill. I went alone in the neighborhood over a circuitous route through the Montrose (basically, a big loop of Taft to Peden to Park down to West Alabama, over to and around the Menil, down to Richmond, up Yoakum, over on Harold, and back home, but with some switchbacks I inserted to make the time come out roughly correct) that took about an hour; GoogleMaps reports it was 5.2 miles or so, which is a distinct improvement. Another shocker: I wasn’t miserable or nearly dead at the end, and found I was getting bored during the 2-minute walking breaks. Clearly, it’s time to adjust to 4:30 x 1:30 or so, which will have the pleasant effect of increasing my speed. The goal is to run for about an hour, but it’d be nice to get to the point where running for an hour goes farther than 5 miles.

Which brings me to the next point: route selection. Up to now, we’ve been doing 3-mile routes over at Memorial Park and my old up-and-back route on the Heights Boulevard. As we push distance, twice around the White Oak/Sawyer trail seems like a better idea, but is difficult for me mentally since I’m most likely to want to bail at a place on the track where it’s easy to do so (i.e., as I return to the start to being lap 2). Twice around Memorial is a good goal, but it’s dead boring to repeat, and would suffer the same temptation aspect as the White Oak trail. Fortunately, Fleet Feet has some maps that are useful.

The first is a rundown of an absurd 9.76 mile route that includes both Memorial Park and the Allen Parkway trail, but it includes the information that the AP route alone is 4.76 miles, crossing at Shepherd and Sabine. That’s a nice long loop with essentially no chance of cheating, which is nice.

The other is one I knew of before, but had forgotten. Rice’s outer track is 2.9 miles, but is close to another 2 mile loop over at Hermann Park (Marvin Taylor Loop, 1.98miles). They’re connected by a .73 mile jaunt from the main gate of Rice over to the Rose Garden, yielding about a 5.5 mile loop. The nice part about this route is that you could go with folks who prefer the shorter 3-mile course and still meet up at the same endpoint.

Of course, there are also planned runs, which are much better than running alone. The Wurstfest run is already on the calendar, but we feel like most any 5K/5 mile/10K runs are in our grasp. I’ve done the MFA run a few times, but they no longer do it for some reason. What other inner-loop runs exist in the sub-half-marathon range? Is there a decent calendar somewhere? The one at SignMeUpSports, well, sucks; surely there’s a better option.

Even factoring in the sucky available calendars, though, I did find these:

• Rice 5K on 11/1, at 6pm on a Thursday. I’m out of town, but the rest of the crowd could consider it.
• Chevron Jingle Bell, with 5 mile and 5K options, Sunday 12/9, 2pm. I suspect there’s no reason not to do that one.