I was a lazy bum

I was a lazy bum (relatively speaking) on Sunday and skipped my scheduled long run, so I promised myself that I would do it last night. Otherwise I’d miss it entirely, and that wasn’t a good option. So I headed out from work a tad early to do three laps on the Gilruth trail. I timed it just perfectly — any later and the first half of my last lap (the wooded part) would have been completely dark. As it was, there was just enough light left for me to run without turning an ankle.
The Gilruth trail is 2.9 miles (wish they could find a way to add a tenth), so my splits are a bit wacky. I decided to just hit my watch on the miles, or else I’d never know exactly where I was after the first loop. Then about a half mile into the second loop, the battery in my mp3 player died! I’d forgotten to change it! Argh!!
Fortunately, no sooner than the battery died, David (the guy I met at the Reindeer Run a couple weekends ago) ran up from behind me. We ended up running the rest of my second loop together and chatting, so it turned out that the dead headphones weren’t the end of the world. 🙂
As he headed inside for a bathroom break, I added a tenth of a mile to my second loop to stop by my car to pick up a fresh battery. That made the second loop an even 3 miles.
First Loop:
Mile 1 – 11:00
Mile 2 – 10:55
Final .9 – 9:38
(31:33 loop)
Second Loop:
Mile 1 – 10:52
Mile 2 – 11:12 (chatting with my new friend David)
Mile 3 – 11:45 (a full mile, including a pause at my car to get a new battery for my mp3 player!)
(33:49 loop)
Third Loop:
Mile 1 – 10:46
Mile 2 – 11:03 (including a pause to gulp from the water fountain)
Final .9 – 9:18
(31:07 loop)
Totals:
8.8 miles
1:36:31
10:58/mile
183 average heart rate
I’m really happy with the run. Almost 9 miles (my training schedule called for 8), which is farther than I’ve run since, well, the marathon last January. I’m feeling good about the upcoming Half. It’d still take a miracle for me to equal my two 2:15 halfs of 2004, but I’m thinking that my 11:00/mile goal may just be doable.
Best part? I felt good for the entire run tonight, and I didn’t take any walking breaks! It was only in the last 1.5 miles that I started to tighten up — my hips started to ache in that vaguely familiar way that I remember from marathon training — the ache that says “wow, Sarah, you’ve made us poor legs and hips run farther than we have recently…”
Hooray for good long runs.