Monday, October 22, 2012

A New Personal Best


The other night, I went out and ran 8.2 miles and it felt AWESOME!!!!!!!!  I wanted to try a new route to incorporate a very challenging hill.  This hill is a mile long with an increase in elevation of 400 feet. Trust me, it is one tough hill.  Even though I have walked this hill many times while also pushing a double stroller, running it is a completely different ballgame.
 
Including this new detour added about two miles to my usual run, for a total of approximately 6.8 miles.  As I was nearing the end of it, I was feeling really good and felt like I could reach some of my new October goals.  I’ve been wanted to attempt some longer distances, like 7 miles, 7.5 miles and 8 miles.  I decided to go for it, so I went once around my loop, giving me a total of 7.5 miles.  I was still feeling great and went around one more time, which gave me 8.2 miles, a new record for distance.  I wanted to keep going and maybe get to 10 miles, but the little voice in my head begged me to stop.  There have been times before when I went too far too soon and wound up hurt.  

I’m thrilled to report that my legs felt so great afterwards and into the morning, that after taking the kids to school, I went for a fantastic five mile run!  That’s 13.2 miles in the span of 16 hours, a half marathon completed in one day.  This is giving me the confidence that the half marathon coming up in March is not a far-fetched idea.  

To top it all off, before I took the kids to school, I was telling my boys that I did an eight mile run.  In his cutest two year old voice, my son screamed out “WHY?”.  I answered, “Because it is fun!!”

Also, I want to give a shout out to my sister.  She reached her 2012 goal of 600 miles last week.  Way to go baby SIS!!!  Eight of those miles we ran together. 

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