9 miles

almost there!

Erica and I ran 9 miles last night. It took a little longer than we were really hoping for, just over 2hrs. But we didn't really push very hard, we walked a lot, had some good talks. That was nice. It was along the race route, and we ran all the way to the Capitol, and it felt great! It was surprisingly not too tough, around mile 6-7 I found the "zone" and was able to just keep running even though I was getting kind of tired, and I ended up feeling like I actually had some energy left at the end. This makes me happy, like I shouldn't have a problem running the one additional mile to make it a full 10. We'll find out, because the 10 mile training run is going to be in a couple weeks.

8 weeks to go before the race, I'm trying to come up with a time goal to aim for. I was thinking 2hrs 10min, but based on last night's run, I dunno....but maybe I'll have a better idea after actually having run 10 miles. One thing I'm pretty sure of, I think for these longer runs I'll have to start earlier. We started running at 7:30pm, and it was just after 10 by the time I got home, we were running the last mile and a half or so in the dark. Starting later was a good strategy when it was warmer and the days were longer, but it's not really necessary or all that helpful anymore, especially now that the runs are longer.

Outside of knees that are just a little bit sore, I feel good, very encouraged about how well things are going and that they will continue to do so until the actual race. If things keep up this way, I really may have to consider possibly doing a half marathon sometime next year, it's within the realm of possibility.