Sunny run

Today's run was nice because it was my first run in the sun in awhile!  My weekday runs have been in the dark lately because I always run after work.  But the sunshine sure felt great today and gave me the extra boost I needed to make it through 7 miles of running, 8 miles total!

I was trying hard to make sure I ran slow when we started out (hubby went with me - yay!), but I ended up throwing myself off.  I was running all wonky and ended up feeling more tired after the first 3.5 miles than I did after the 3.25 mile run at the 10:30 pace earlier this week.  During the second half I allowed myself to pick up the pace a little bit and just run where it felt comfortable, with the result that I didn't have any shin pain and felt better on the whole.

At the halfway point we stopped at the house for a water break and to fuel up.  Today I tried Clif ShotBloks, strawberry flavor, and I really liked them!  I felt like they really did give me a tiny burst of energy, they tasted great, and they didn't leave my mouth feeling salty like the gel did.  I will definitely be trying these again!

I felt like the ideal plan for this run would be to do four 1.75 mile segments, with the usual .25 mile walk breaks in between.  However, I was prepared to have to split it into five segments rather than four, if I was feeling tired.  I started off feeling very strong, though, and we ended up running 2 miles before the first walk break, followed by a 1.5 mile running segment and then our halfway break.  I was feeling so bad after the first half I really thought we'd be splitting the last half into 1.25-1.25-1 segments.  But changing up my pace and attitude really helped and we made it to 1.75-1-.75!  I would have loved to just do two segments in the last half instead of three, but after that 1 mile my legs were feeling dead so I knew I'd have to have a break!  I'm okay with it though because it put us at a nice even 8 miles total!  We finished in 1:35:13 with an average pace of 11:53...which I think is AWESOME!!!!!