so, 9.5 miles...............

This morning I went out and ran 9.5 miles - my longest run yet. And it.kicked.my.ass. Literally. It is now 4:00pm and my legs and butt are still hurting. I don't think that I have felt this bad during or after a run up to this point. In fact, things have been going so well that last night as I was reading about marathons in Runner's World, I actually had the thought in my stupid head, "THAT WOULDN'T BE TOO HARD." OMG, what? Has running fried my brain cells? This morning was a real wake-up call for me. I finished it though and didn't walk a bit, even though I contemplated it.

After a run, and after the half-marathon, I want to be able to say that I "ran" it, not "finished" it. That may be silly, but it's what I've gotten in my head as the goal that I want to accomplish. I have gotten past fretting over my ever slower pace and I don't have a time-goal in my head at all for the half-marathon. I haven't even tried to figure out what an average time is or what my time would be if I ran a certain pace per mile. Right now I'm just concentrating on running, one foot in front of the other, for 13.1 miles.

thanks lance!

So.............I know I'm late on posting, but it's not because I didn't do my FOUR mile run on Sunday! I did it - my longest run ever - as in my whole life. And Lance Armstrong came on my ipod after I finished and congratulated me! I had another congrats when I downloaded my run onto nikeplus and found out that I hit the 100 mile mark on there. All in all a good day.

I did learn a few things that I will take into account on my next long run. I am used to running in the evenings so running on Sunday morning was a switch for me. I am going to stick with doing my long runs on Sunday mornings though because the half marathon is on a Sunday morning, so I will be used to it. I am going to try to go out earlier next time because even though I went out around 8:15am it was already HOT. I also need to remember to eat a good dinner the night before. We went to the beach on Saturday and ate a bunch of crap and got home late that night. I think I would've had a better run if I had prepared better the day/night before.

This week's training plan is a repeat of last week's. I'll be running 3 miles today (Tuesday), 2 miles Wednesday, 3 miles Thursday, and 4 miles Sunday. I was supposed to "stretch and strengthen" yesterday but I was busy giving my dog a bath! That does take some muscle, so that counts, right?