11 miles on rested legs

Thank you, rest day.  That is all. 

Let’s just say Saturday’s long run turned into what I’m deeming my best 11 miles ever.  And that’s *with* a rather rainy “blah” start to the 11.

We were up around 7:30 (correction: I was up then, Scott took a little nudging out of bed…ha) ready to hit the road by 8. Scott said “I have a really bad feeling we’re about to get poured on.” So of course, I braced myself for the worst. One look out the window told me it was definitely raining – not pouring, but not sprinkling either, a pretty steady, yucktastic rain.

But off we went. Me in my “I heart sweat” shirt (obvs) for extra motivation. A quick tweet to keep myself accountable (totally worked btw) and we were on our way.

At first, I outright considered turning our “long run” Saturday into a short run and flipping Sunday’s “recovery run” into our long run instead. It was pretty gross out. And I knew Scott wasn’t feeling it but was trying to be all supportive (which I totally appreciated, what a guy).  However, we got into a groove pretty quickly and before we knew it were already about 4 miles into our route when the rain started to let up.

And that’s when “golden hour” hit. The rain was no longer an issue (or distraction) and my legs were running along rather happily. Scott settled into a groove at that point too. We hit our first turnaround point and I bargained with myself – we’re already about a third of the way in, we got this. I was feeling so good and so glad that we didn’t give up like I originally anticipated we might.

Around mile 7, I knew we were gonna finish all 11. Mile 7 is where we run right past our street and it is often painful to know how close, yet how far, we are from the end of our run.  But Saturday? I wasn’t looking at our street longingly, I was ready to power on at that point.  And power on, we did.

Before I knew it, we’d hit our last turnaround, and then our final loop before the home stretch. Scott grabbed my wrist to check the time and told me to ‘push it’ the final half mile. So I dutifully listened and pushed it up the hill and around the corner to the end.

11 miles done in 1:49:59 exactly. 

If I keep that pace up on race day, I could conceivably PR this race. And after watching the race course video (which I LOVE btw), I am feeling so good about this race. Not only is it a gorgeous course, but it is FLAT as a pancake. (If you have a few mins, go check out the video on the homepage of the race,very cool).

Long story short? Rested legs = happy legs. Happy legs = an awesome 11 miles. An awesome 11 miles = a welcomed confidence boost with just three weeks until race day.