9 Miles is a long freaking way....

And it's more than a little daunting that in just over 3 months I'll be running almost 3 times that distance. But one step at a time.

Last Sunday was my longest run in, oh, 8 months. It really wasn't so bad except for the last mile and a half. That's when things started to get rough. The previous weekends long run was supposed to have been a step down week with an easy run of five miles. Well, the universe seemed to conspire against me on that day and so I ended up skipping the run altogether. No problem. I'd already done 7 two weeks ago so 9 is only a couple more, right? Apparently my body remembered it had gone 7 and thought that should be it.

I took gel at the 1.25 mile mark, and then again at the 6 mile mark. Each seemed to help a bit and didn't upset my stomach, so that was good. I probably didn't drink enough water, so I'll have to keep that in mind for next time.

Initially my shins had been a bit sore from running a pretty run with my sister on an indoor track during which we pushed the pace a bit. For those of you who know me (and I'd be more than a little surprised if there was anyone reading this who doesn't) you know that I'm not the smallest guy (right now I weigh about 215). That's a lot of pressure to be putting on my legs when you really pound it out. Surprisingly my shins didn't give me any problems during the long run. Sure they were a little sore, but that's to be expected. My quads, however, burned! Especially that last 1.5 miles. No worries, just a good kind of burn.

My goals for the run were:

1: run the whole thing (check)

2: finish the run (check)

3: maintain an 11 minute mile pace, thereby beating Apollo (my Garmin virtual training partner), (check).

The end result : 9 miles with an avg pace of 10:42.

Mission accomplished.