Good Long Run

I feel great! I just came back from my longest run ever! The last time I ran was on Sunday (a week ago) when I did the run for the parks. I had a long week with many evening plans and tennis matches, which then meant that I took Monday through Friday off of running. We didn't have tennis practice on Friday, so my plan was to get home early and run Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for a total of about 13 miles so that my mileage this week wasn't lower than last week.

Yesterday (Friday), however, my colleagues in the college office and I went out for lunch. It ended up being a late lunch and I had a few beers, so by the time I got home at 5:30 or so and walked the dog, I didn't feel much like running. (On a side note, we went to a cool little place for lunch called the Boat Basin Cafe. It's located right on the water at the 79th Street boat basin. The food was mediocre, but it was a fun place to have lunch.) So instead of running, I ate too many leftovers for dinner, followed by too many Thin Mints (we are FINALLY done with the girl scout cookies I ordered), and drank too many beers. I ended up falling asleep in front of the Yankee game. (In case it's not clear from my Friday evening activities, I'm bachin' it this weekend - Sara's in the ATL with her family).

Today I woke up and felt a little annoyed with myself for eating and drinking too much in my lonely bachelorhood, and so decided I would go for a long run today. My goal was to run 54 minutes along the path (27 minutes out and 27 back) which would be at least 6 miles (assuming I kept up at least a 9 min/mile pace). I ended up running 61 minutes for 7 miles (an 8:42 pace). I felt great. I was breathing well and my legs were feeling really good. I was even able to run up the hills all the way back to my front door. This was fabulous. I have never run 7 miles before and my run today really felt great. I know that not all my runs between now and the marathon will be this good, but accomplishing this today was a huge mental leap for me. I can now see myself running the long training runs more easily than I had expected. I worry sometimes that because I'm doing this by myself (not that I don't have support, but I don't really have a training buddy) that I'll lose motivation, but today proved a huge accomplishment for me. This run was also important b/c in May I'm running a 10K race, which I've never done, so I wanted to be sure I got some longer distances in before then. It was also really nice to set a goal for myself today and then to totally break it easily! Next time, I'll set a harder goal.

Speaking of goals . . .

If you'll remember, in my first two posts of this blog I set 7 goals for myself. This seems like as good a time as any to revisit those goals and to check in on my progress.

Goal number six, to run the NYC Half-Marathon Grand Prix, is already out of the window. I have already missed at least two (maybe three?) of the half-marathons (there are five, one per borough) so there's no way I can meet that goal.
But what about the other goals?

Goal 1 - To get my weight down to 178. - Who knows. It's not there yet, but the intense training has yet to begin . . . still not out of the question.
Goal 2 - Run More - I'm doing that. I will have to run at least 5 days per week when I'm training, so that's not a problem.
Goal 3 - Finish the marathon - still on track here.
Goal 4 - Finish the marathon in under 3:45. - What was I thinking?? This is absurd. I will be thrilled if I can finish at all! I'm going to revise this to say under 4 hrs.
Goal 5 - Run one short race at a sub 7 min/mile pace. - I will have to do some serious speed training to get this done, but I'm still going to try. This summer I'll be able to devote lots of time to running.
Goal 6 - See above
Goal 7 - Become more regular. - Done

I'd also like to add another goal.
Goal 8 - Become more flexible and stretch more. If I'm going to be doing all of this running, I really need to stretch more, so my goal is to build time for stretching into my running time.

Finally, I'd like to point out a few features of my blog. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll find my running calendar which has runs I've completed in green and runs I've scheduled in red. Also, along the right hand side of the page, at the top you'll find the total number of miles I've run as well as a countdown clock to the marathon. Enjoy!