A cold and sunny Saturday, my favorite.

11/2: Rest

11/3: 6 miles, TM in pm

11:4: Rest

11/5: 4 miles, TM in am

11/6: Rest. Random strength 

11/8: 10.5 miles, outside and solo. 

11/9: 4.5 easy w D, outside in the cold rain

Total weekly mileage: 25

Total rest days : 3

Total strength days: debatable

I've been throwing in a few random evening runs into the mix, and I have a couple thoughts:

It's not as bad as I remembered, 

And

I can't believe I used to run exclusively in the evenings after work. 

I think my body is adapting well to this daylight savings change, not the spring version. I've been able to convince myself to get up easier than it was a couple weeks ago, although it's still not completely consistent.

Saturday's long run was fantastic. It has been a very long time since I've had a solid paced longer run, and i felt great the entire time, paced myself accordingly to plan, and only wanted to explode once (at the end, duh). I rode the high of my run the entire weekend. I texted two of my fellow runner friends, and basically shouted my run love from the mountain tops. 

I started with two easy warm up miles, intentionally ignoring my watch. Whoever said the run is not to be judged by the first (two?) miles.. Preach! Preach it hard.

When my watch beeped at mile 2, I reset my watch, turned on my music, and focused or the next 8 miles. My plan was to pace myself two miles at a time. 

2 warmup

Reset

2 at 9:30 ish

2 at 9:20 (Gu)

2 at 9:10

2 at 9 or below

Reset

.5 cool down

Splits
Mile 1 - 9:20
Mile 2 - 9:36
Total time: 18:56
Mile 3 - 9:25
Mile 4 - 9:28

Mile 5 - 9:15
Mile 6 - 9:24
Mile 7 - 9:07
Mile 8 - 8:55
Mile 9 - 9:07
Mile 10 - 8:42
Total time - 1:13

Mile .5 - Cool down

Overall pace: (using an online pace calculator): 9:12

I fueled with a salted caramel GU around mile 4, and sipped tiny blobs of sugar until almost mile 6. I didn't have any water with me so I didn't want to shock my gut with too much sugar all at once. I think this worked well for me, and I felt a steady sustained level of energy throughout the middle miles. I started to get pretty thirsty around mile 8.5, but I knew I only had a little longer until I reached 10 miles, so I pushed myself as much as I could until the end. At mile 10, I reset my watch one more time, and slogged/walked a cool down home.

When I got home, I looked at my splits and was surprised to see that one of my middle miles was sub 9, which was not in my plan and yet, I remember that mile feeling solid. Actually, all of the miles felt good.

Now, from an outsiders perspective, maybe my time was average, and my paces easy, but this run meant more to me than just numbers to be hit. 

Like I said earlier, I haven't felt so good or so capable on so long. This is the run I needed to remind myself that I really can do this if I set my mind in the right place. 

For the first time in a long time, I felt confident, happy, strong.

I felt like a runner.