A long run.....finally!

Back in October I registered for the Holiday Halfathon in December. Since then it has been near impossible for me to get a long, quality run in. Between my husbands crazy work schedule, my kids and a few dumb injuries I was seriously doubting I'd be capable of running the 13.1 mi. Finally last night I was able to get a long run in. Barb, Christy and I headed out with a plan to run 6.3mi. I mapped it out on mapmyrun because the battery is dead in my Garmin foot pod. Unfortunately we never even saw the road that was supposed to be our turn around point. After a few discussions on our estimated distance we eventually decided to turn around. Also, the sun was setting and we weren't exactly thrilled about running thru Starkey and 54 (both known for coyotes and bobcats) in the dark. That's probably also the reasoning for our increased pace on the way home. On our way out we were into the wind and it was at our back on the return trip. That's always a bonus. The temperature also dropped considerably on the way back and even though we'd been running for over an hour I was getting cold. The run-in with the sprinklers on Duckslough didn't help. Poor Christy hit a puddle that was up to her ankles. I ran out into the road(infront of a car) to avoid the puddle. Apparently I'd rather be hit by a car than soaked with the reclaimed water! When we stopped at the gate we'd been running for exactly 1:29mins. We all felt a little dissapointed and immediately started blaming our injuries. Christy's hiatus from running, Barb's T band and my sore back. Through it all I was still convinced we'd gone farther than 6mi. My body told me so. This morning after dropping the kids at school I immediately set out to plot our course.

I was not at all surprised when I hit our turn around point and my odometer read 4.2. That's a round trip of 8.4mi! So instead of being bummed about a bad 10k time I was thrilled that we ran 8mi(we walked the last .3 back to my house) in 1:29! Not to mention this time included two shoe adjustments and a quick pee in the woods! I realize this is not considered a fast time to many but considering we hadn't ran more than 4mi consecutively in over a month I think we did pretty damn good. This gives me new hope for my upcoming half.

Don't get me wrong I'm not expecting to dominate. However, the beauty of this race is that it is my 1st half marathon and there's no pressure to beat a previous time.

Tomorrow we leave for GA and I'm hoping to get a few more long runs in and I'm really looking forward to the change of scenery!