April 23rd--Long Run

I don't have any pictures from today, but I thought I would comment on my long run today. I'd like to take pictures of my course; it would mean giving up a run to walk through the course, though, and I never want to do that.

I'm running a half marathon on May 12, and in preparation for that I thought I'd do a long run, based more on time than on distance. My normal plan is to run as far as I can as fast as I can, and I have a limit of around an hour, sometimes a little more. I decided to just run for 2 hours, at a slower pace. I'm hoping to run the 1/2 faster than that, so I figured it would be good to run just slightly longer than I plan on running--good for endurance and all that.

So I started out from my house, which is not normal; a typical run has me driving a mile and a half to my start, so that I don't have to run on a busy street in the early morning, when it's still kind of dark. But since I was running later in the morning, I started from home.

Knowing that I would have a mile and a half to get home, I thought I would run my course around the campus of Mills 3 times, (3 mile loops) and run a total of 12 miles. However, my pace was faster than I thought it would be (I tried to slow down, really!), so after the 3rd loop around campus I had to decide if I could go 3 more miles, or if I should just run 1-2 more miles around the track before heading home. Of course, at that point in my run I want to keep going (I know, that sounds really weird to some people!), so I went for it.

The hardest part was the 3/4 of a mile uphill at the very end--I normally like to sprint at the end of any run, but I could barely get up that hill at a jog. I did it, though, and went 15 miles in 2:06.

I was very pleased with that--it was supposed to be at a slower pace, and was at the pace I have thought I would run the half marathon. Now I'm trying to figure out what my personal goal for the race will be.