Yesterday I ran the farthest I have ever gone by myself-eight miles. I wasn't expecting anything great. I felt beat up and worn out from Saturday's soccer game and have been battling shin splints literally since the day after I signed up for the marathon.
I decided to aim for a pace between 10:30 and 11 minutes per mile, but didn't look at my garmin very often for pace-I just ran what felt good. I finished the first mile in 10 flat. Too fast, so I slowed down. The next two miles were 10:34 and 10:26-right on target.
I finished mile four in 10:11. I was surprised but was feeling pretty good so I didn't worry too much about it. I took a walk break just after mile 4 to drink some water and eat a fruit rope which resulted in a 10:40 for mile 5. Not terrible considering the walk break.
When I finished mile six in 10:11, I realized I was close to finishing this run in around the same time it took me for my first eight mile run when John and I were training for our first half marathon.
Our time was 1:22:52 which is a 10:21 pace. I started running faster but was blown away when I finished mile 7 in 9:57. At this point I thought that I might be able to finish even better than John and I had. I finished mile 8 in 9:39 with an overall time of 1:21:41 and pace of 10:12 per mile.
Not only did I finish this eight mile run faster than my previous, I was in so much better shape. I remember leaning on John to keep myself up and having to immediately sit down once we finished. This time I finished strong and even had gas in the tank afterward.
So that's that. Runs like this make all the bad ones worth it. I still have two more long runs to get through before the half, but if I keep going like this then I'm feeling pretty confident that, if nothing else, this half won't be as painful as the first one.
0 comments:
Post a Comment