Making Ten Miles My Bitch

This morning I once again broke through that ten mile barrier.

Today, I knew I could get past it, but I still had the little doubts in my head. “Ten miles is a long way, you sure you want to?”  Well, the 11.35 miles I did today, says “YES!”  I still worry about running ten miles, just not as much any more.  I ran it doing 5/1s, but does that mean I ran at leaset 10 miles today or did I walk some of it?  Well, turns out, I actually ran 10.09 miles today.  While the rest of it was walking.

The entire run took me 1:48:56, which happens to be 3 miles slower than I ran the 10.35 miles last week. Right off the bat, I not only ran further today, but ran quite a bit faster.  Average pace overall was 9:36.  My average pace during just my 5 minutes of runs, 9:03.  There was one 5 minute interval where my pace was 11::34 but that was because I stopped off at my truck and swapped out water bottles.  If I did not need to do that, then I would have had a sub 9 min average for the runs.  It is all about fast transition times!

I did try to push myself a bit today, to see how it would work out.  I wanted better time than I did last week, and I achieved that.  Also, with this week, my legs didn’t start to feel much until mile 9.25.  So that’s also a 1.5 mile improvement over last week.  I would say that my training is going well for me.  Just need to keep with it.   Next week is 12 miles.  I’m quite comfortable, sitting here with tired and achy legs, in saying that, 12 miles should not be an issue on Saturday at all.  I probably could have pushed that out today if I really wanted to, but no need in going beyond what is prescribed and possibly doing some damage that could harm the goal.

My legs now know what 10 miles of actual running is again.  They aren’t hating me.  My head is in a good place right now. Over all, today was a good day for breaking mental barriers and pushing physical limits.  Reminds me of a quote I came up with many years ago when I first started getting into shape…

“Limitations are a fabrication of the mind”