The Most WOnderful tiiiiime of the Year!

It's Fall!  Today was the 1st day of Fall!  The leaves are starting to turn and you can smell fall in the air.  Temperatures are lovely for running!  I will spare you of my rant about how incredible football season is.  While also being the first day of fall, today was Friday!  Oh how I love my Fridays. 

I was dreading my long run today.  Truly.  It was raining off and on and I was not looking forward to the 10 miles of torture.  So I whipped out my handy dandy book by the Marathon CEO and ooooh, how I needed his thoughts today.  By the time I got through reading the next chapter mile, I was ready to run.  And I just wanted to have fun with my run today. 

And for the first four miles, I did just that.  I just had a good time.  i enjoyed the beauty of the trail, the fall weather, the leaves on the trail, the blessings in my life and I just smiled.  At mile 4 I checked my watch and realized I was running very slowly.  Like, realllll slow.  So I tried to conscious of my lolly-gagging and direct more attention to my running.  Yeah, that didn't work out very well.

About 6.5 miles in, I started feeling it.  My knees were a bit achey, my hamstrings were a little tight, but I still had a ways to go.  And I thought, "self, I really wouldn't mind if the clouds opened up and it started raining.  I am a bit thirsty after all."  .........  ............................................  Ohhhhh yeah, mile 7.  The clouds indeed opened up and let it fall.  It wasn't so bad.  It didn't really make me any less thirsty or ease the pain any, but it changed things up a bit. 

Do to my miscalculation (which if you know me and my numbers skills is no surprise), I had an extra half mile to get back to my starting point that I hadn't planned on.  I finally figured this out while trying to figure out why my watch said I was running crazy ridiculously slow, not just Really slow like I actually was. I was soooo looking forward to stopping at 10 miles even.  But then I tossed around the benefits and consequences of running an extra half mile or mile versus walking the same in the rain.  So I split the baby and ran 10.5 miles and walked half a mile to cool down.  It took me one hour and 53 minutes to run 10.5 miles.  Which is Crazy slow!  I blame it on the cookies.

I did it.  And at least part of it was fun.  But now I can't walk.  Eah, walking is overrated.