Need for Speed

Recently I saw that Tricia of Endurance Isn't Only Physical (a great blog, by the way!) posted about being a slow runner.  I can totally relate to this.  While I'm in no means the slowest person on the face of the earth, compared to my most of my running friends I am slower.   I LOVE that I have great friends in Charlotte who also like running. It's fun that we share an interest and sign up for races together.

Some of them like running/training together, and I'm pretty much always up for that. The only thing is, I feel like I'm slow compared to most of my running friends, and get nervous that I will slow them down too much if we run together. Many are training for important races and PR's and I don't want to mess with their running goals if they are going slow to stay with me. It's partly why I did order the Garmin Forerunner finally.
I figured I could:
A) Work on speed
B) Be in charge of my own distance and speed and not have to rely on anyone else to know my distance or speed.

How do you handle running with other people if you are not the same speed?
 

Tuesday night I decided to get in a quick "speed" run around my neighborhood.  I'm still waiting for the Garmin to arrive (yes, I track where it is almost daily), but I thought since I was doing a shorter run, I'd work on increasing my speed as best I could.  I did about 3 or 4 sprints during my run and rounded out about 1-2 miles. 

Post run, I re-purposed the last of my sad Kashi rice from the night before.  When in doubt, add soy sauce.

I made a quick fried rice with:

onions

carrots

zucchini

peas

the leftover rice

black sesame seeds

I sauteed it all in a little peanut oil and added soy sauce and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil at the end:

This was my most successful dish with the Kashi rice pilaf.  If I had another box to go through, I might just use it only for this dish.  I love fried rice, but especially when loaded with veggies like this was and all the flavors really livened up my bland rice.