Perspective

Day 31
8 mile tempo run at 9:57/mile pace

Good ideas always sound better at 8:30 pm instead of 4:30 am. Christina called last night and said that she had to be home by 6:40 am from our 8 mile run. I fished around to see how much wiggle room she had--6:44--and we decided that 5:00 am would be our start time.

So I stumbled out of bed and made my way to Virg's with some water. Then over to Christina's. We started our route--a modified version of the 11 miler you guys did Friday. We hit mile 1 at 10:01. At about 1.5 miles, two dogs who weren't chained up came after us. Though I was wearing a headlamp, when I looked over all I saw was two very large dogs with glowing eyes. So I suggested that we walk since I wasn't sure what kind of dogs they were and I didn't want to appear as a threat. We ended up walking about .10 of the mile and that threw our entire time goal out the window.

From that point on, it was just run 8 miles. I've NEVER run 8 miles nonstop (minus a dog run-in). I've missed all the long runs this training plan for one thing or another. When I trained for my marathon I did a 25 minute run/5 min walk plan, which was nice until you had to start running again after the first 5 minute segment. :) So, just finishing was a new feeling.

If I would've written this post right afterwards, I would have lamented our dismal times, but after thinking about it for the day, I'm actually pretty proud of us. For starters, this is a tough course with a gradual uphill that goes on for about 2 miles at the beginning. Also, we had to do two laps around Christina's neighborhood to finish our 8 miles and we both had to use the bathroom. It's always hard to see your car and know you're so close, yet so far away. And not to mention it was 5 am. My body doesn't really know what 5 am looks like.

Also, I was thinking about the six mile run we did in April along the same course. I thought I was going to die. Everything hurt so bad and I was soooo slow. I can't find where I actually figured out the minutes/mile, but I think I was at almost 12 minutes and I had to walk. So I guess I'm getting in better shape.

We averaged 10:32/mile, which is slightly faster than our long run pace. I really think we might have been able to get on target if we wouldn't have had the run in with the dogs. It threw the timing off and, in these longer runs, you get excited for every mile that hits under that pace.

However, I felt like we did good. Yay for 8 miles.

Here's our splits:
Mile 1: 10:01
Mile 2: 10:44
Mile 3: 10:34
Mile 4: 11:01
Mile 5: 10:15
Mile 6: 10:35
Mile 7: 10:40
Mile 8: 10:29