This led me to be a little concerned about this simple training run, mostly for the fact that this is the most distance I have done since the actual race.
Don't I look like I'm having so much fun?? Haha.
Man buns for life!!? Also why my mom started calling me sprout. I guess it's growing on me.
So far my training has been going great.. And has been injury free.. But I was nervous that the severe pain I normally felt in my hip during longer distance runs, might come back with a vengeance.
BUT, I knew that if I wanted to beat my time at my next half in January, long runs like these are important.
Saturday it was pouring rain, but luckily not too cold out. I put on my long sleeve and running pants, and laced up my shoes.
I also wore a rain coat and packed some Energy Bloks into my pockets, knowing I would need them about half way in.
Seriously, these things are great! My body doesn't hate me when I eat them (much like it does with most food), they're easy to eat, small, yummy (have had all the berry flavours, strawberry is my fave), and have tons of quick carbs and caffeine. Plus you don't really need water with them, like most other quick energy nutrition does (I don't own a camelbak/hydration pack yet). They're a really good choice for race/running supplementation.
Okay back on topic..
I started off in the rain, heading toward my typical route, which is an old train tracks turned into trail, and goes for about 200km straight (sometime I will do a bike trip on this entire thing!).
About 3km in, my Nike plus app stopped giving me feedback. At first, I was freaking out, like oh no how will I know how far I've gone?, or when I've reached the halfway point?, or how fast I'm going?!
Until I realized how free I actually felt without it.
Running without stressing over pace or distance like I always do actually felt great. I wasn't worried about anything, I was just simply enjoying the run and how peaceful it was. Knowing I had to do 19.3km, I kept an eye on the distance around 9km so I could turn around at halfway.
When I reached 9.65km I stopped to quickly eat the cliff energy bloks, then continued on my way.
A little rurther ahead, I ran past another girl running, we both acknowledged each other, and commented on the commitment of running during a rain storm. True story.
Side note.. I normally always run with a hat as well.. However recently I've been wearing my hair up in what I like to call a female man bun (Feman bun, hehe). I've always had crazy long hair and a couple months ago, stupidly decided to chop it all off, so now I'm dealing with the consequences of trying to exercise with hair too short for a ponytail. It's a serious struggle.
Anyways, back to the story, so after my Nike plus losing its voice, I finally arrived home. I opened up the app to make it stop tracking, and to my delight I had finished the run in 2 hours and 5 minutes!
This is very exciting news, considering with that pace, if I had of kept going, I could have finished a half marathon in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. That's over a whole half hour shorter that my first half! And from that comes my newest goal..
Run the hypothermic half in less than 2:15.
Considering this run, that's very possible for me. So long as I continue to be healthy and fully healed like I am so far this time with training (knock on wood).
This weekend, I'm due for another 19.3km run, so you can bet I'll be aiming for around the same time, if not better. That will be a great indicator of how I'll do while in the actual race, so I'm excited to see if I can improve with a weeks worth of training.
Stay tuned friends,
The Rural Runner
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