Well, today Carena and I set out to do a long run. Her longest previously was 8.25 miles, and mine (recently) was about 10.5 miles, so we set out to do around a 10-11 miler. We decided to run the Chain of Lakes, which includes Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun, and Lake of the Isles. This is a gorgeous route, which in turn makes it a very busy route. Nonetheless, it was an amazingly enjoyable run. One big plus is that there is very little elevation change, which made this far easier to run than it would be to run the same distance in Lakeville. As we came up on the car, we had completed just under 10 miles. Still feeling pretty good, we decided why not push for the whole 13.1 miles, so we ran an extra lap and change around Lake Harriet to hit the correct mileage. It's a pretty nifty route, which you can see in the workout details here.
I ended up with a time of 2:03:25, which I feel is pretty good for me considering I wasn't even really going for speed until the last 3 or 4 miles. If I were racing, I'm confident I could shave quite a bit off that time, so I think I could run a sub-2hour half marathon. At the end of this run, I was getting somewhat fatigued, but I certainly still had plenty of gas left in the tank. If you compare it to my only actual half marathon race time (from 2006), which was 2:12:05, it's quite an improvement. Also, if I were to compare my level of fatigue between the two runs, there's no comparison; I was exhausted at the end of the race from 2006, but I actually feel pretty good today.
Carena did amazingly well, especially when you consider she hadn't run more than just over 8 miles before in her life. She was unsure if she would be ready for the actual race we're running in October, but I'm pretty sure this should change her outlook significantly :P.
I'm definitely as pumped for running as I have been in a long time. I can't wait to get out there tomorrow!
Til next time,
Dave
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