Redemption: the 16 miles that should have been

I am beyond thrilled about my run today but before I get ahead of myself let me start at the beginning.

Once again it was hard to get going in the morning but I made it out and over to the trail in time to start at 7:00am on the dot.

The negative mental thoughts came as no surprise. Since they’re so predictable I’m ready for them. 😀 Last night I declared that I would have an awesome run. Today I kept thinking about that as I ran. I also kept telling myself that I would make this run better than the first time I ran 16 miles, a month ago.

The negative thoughts hung around a while this time and I started to wonder if I was cut out to run a marathon right when I entered the hilliest portion of the run. Hills kill me. I thought about running a route that avoided Falls Park but wanted to prove to myself that I could conquer the same 16 miles from a month ago.

I felt really slow in the park but according to my Garmin stats I slowed down an average of 10 seconds a mile, not that bad considering all the insane hills.

I finally fell into a sweet rhythm around the 11-12 mile mark and felt strong despite how tired my legs felt. I was pleasantly surprised to see 9:44 pace occasionally as I ran. (The last miles averaged around 10:16.) This gives me hope that I might be able to sustain sub 10 minute miles come marathon time.

Mile 12 was where it all fell apart a month ago. I ended up walking the first .25 of every mile until the end. Today, though, I didn’t even walk the first .1 of any miles except the second to last. (I ate 5 Gu chops then.)

I still had enough gas in the tank to really push at the end. Here’s the bummer though. As I sprinted the last .15 I realized that I might get to the cross walk (right before the parking lot) with just a couple hundredths left. That’s exactly what happened. I had to stop at 15.99 for some cars to pass. I just laughed.

I felt thrilled when I finished because not only did I finish under 3 hours, I finished just under 2:45!

For comparison’s sake here are the splits from the run a month ago:

and today’s:

I think they speak for themselves.

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