Week #6

Total miles: 28 miles

Thursday: 7 miles

2 easy

3 x 1600 @ 8:41 with 800 easy

1 miles easy

Saturday: 3.1

Race for the Cure 5k

Sunday: 18 @ 10:21

This was a make or break run for me. I've really been struggling on the longer runs so I needed a good run. Mentally, I wasn't that freaked out. On one hand, I was telling myself it was only two more miles than last week's run - no bigge. Then every now and then I would have a wave of anxiety at the thought of an 18 mile run. I mean c'mon, 18?!?!?Fortunately, we had wonderful weather for our run and I know the cooler temps were a big benefit. It also seemed to stay dark for a really long time. I think we were just shy of 10 miles when we were able to finally turn our head lamps off. Having the first half of our run complete before the sun came up really made the run feel like it was flying by. It was also a very quiet morning. It felt like we had the park to ourselves. We didn't see anyone else on the trail until around mile 12 or 13 when we were heading out of the park. I felt great at mile 10, started to get that "oh sh*t, this hurts" feeling at mile 12, felt much better by mile 14, was happier than a pig in mud when we hit our cooler with Gatorade and frozen washcloths just before mile 15 and dug deep to finish the remaining miles strong. The frozen washcloths really made all the difference and I don't know why it took us so long to think of it!

Overall, we kept a nice even pace between 10:15 - 10:30 the whole time. No walking at all and we even picked up the pace the last 4 miles. It was a great run. I could not have been happier with this run! Afterwards, I had a failed attempt at an ice bath. Apparently one bag of ice isn't enough because my body heat had it melted in about 90 seconds. I was in pretty rough shape after the run but felt much better by late afternoon. In the evening, I took a hot epsom salt bath followed by the foam roller and I felt really good this morning. The true test will be my first run of the week tomorrow.