Arts as Astra

I just ran in a 2-mile Fun Run at work today. My primary goal was to run without walking the whole way, and my secondary goal was to do better than a pace of 11:30. The thing is, while I've kept more or less on track with running for about 30 minutes 3 times a week, I wasn't keeping real good track of the distances I've run, so I wasn't really sure what my pace was.

As it turns out, my overall time was 20:12, with a 1-mile split of 10:25. Of course, now I'm all like, couldn't I have pushed myself just 12 seconds faster?? On the other hand, I felt great after the run, both in terms of physical well-being and pride in my time. So hey. I'm not planning to run any half-marathons like dcltdw anytime soon, but I'm happy to see that my running is continuing to improve.

Different topic now: working out while traveling. Last week, while I was in California, I made it to the fitness center every morning while I was there and mostly used the elliptical machine to work out. Go me. remcat had commented to me earlier about wanting to be invisible while working out. Well, not only did the hotel staff all insist on wishing me a good morning every day, but I ran into the same set of scientists from back home every morning also. That's almost worse than running into my neighbors on my runs.

I'm thinking of trying to up my current running routine. I'm wondering if 2.5 miles 3x a week, plus a weekend run of 4 miles is reasonable. Anybody have any good resources for this sort of thing? I'm not looking to train for anything in particular, just wanting to stay in shape.