10 miles!!!!!

Gratuitous exclamation points abound!!!!

So today's run gets a play by play as it was some serious accomplishment. The day started crappy. I kept falling back to sleep. You know the sleep hole where you try to wake up but you're just dreaming that you're getting up.

Anyways I was tired. The whole body did not feel up to it. But I was determined. I got suited and headed out. Knees felt weird, legs felt heavy. Was not a good start to my run. The thing that kept me going was the thought that I may not have a great day at the half marathon. I may feel heavy and tired. I may not have one of those awesome days. But 13.1 miles is not that much so suck it up and keep going. Well today was a 10 mile goal, which is even less, so suck it up even more.

First two miles I was breathing kind of heavier than usual. The thought of being warmed up after mile 2 and that most of the remaining miles would be downhill really helped keep me going.

I debated back and forth about how far I would go. 8 miles was the goal and 10 would just be awesome. I settled on the thought of I will decide when I get to the end of each goal on how I feel.

Made it to the 2 ish mile turn around (yeah mostly downhill!) and started to feel better. I also think about how I want my quads to burn, though I didn't really ever get there. My knees felt great, then sore, then great.

I had to add to cut in's where I turn on a street and do a little loop to make sure I got the right number of miles. By the second cut in I was feeling great. I made back to the turn off for my house at mile 5 and sailed by quite happy.

Cruised down the next 3 miles and waved at the bakery, where I would have coffee later, and happily headed down for the next 2 miles. I felt great and it was soo on!

Mile 8-9 was a challenge, but not too bad. Knees were definitely sore by this point, but my breathing was great and my muscles were totally happy.

Mile 9-10 was a little bit of a challenge but a great one. I had gone faster and slower the entire time and I wanted to finish strong. I had to stop at one point to wait for a light and stretched. After stretching my knees felt awesome! Note to self, stretch more often!

The last mile definitely was a push in terms of cardiovascular effort, I was breathing heavy the whole way but smiling. My legs, knees, muscles, everything felt great!

I cruised to my personal finish line and happily stopped as the rain started to set in. Yep 10 miles.

Good:
Ran 10 miles
1 hour 45 min