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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Mixing It Up: Long Run Style

Wilson and I headed out the door this afternoon with absolutely no clue what distance we were going to run. 10K Race was on the schedule, but uh . . . we sort of slept through our 10K race (oops!). When we got to Prospect Park, I asked whether Wilson would be cool with us just picking random trails to run along, rather than using the same old boring 3.35-mile park loop we tend to frequent. He seemed pretty into this idea, so off we went. I let Wilson lead the way, since he's a tiny bit more familiar with the random trails in the park than I am. Let me tell you , we had a BLAST, and the trails totally kicked our butts (in a good way, of course). It was quite a bit more difficult than I expected it to be . . . lots of hills and stairs and cobblestone to battle. But as I told Wilson, "I think it's good to pick an unfamiliar route every once in a while. After all, we're not exactly going to be familiar with the route we have to run at the half-marathon."

So we snaked along random inside trails/paths until we eventually found our way back out to the main loop, somewhere around 3.2 miles. From there, we decided we'd fininsh out the loop (a little over a half-mile), and then run one full loop to finish up at just over 7 miles. Despite the difficult terrain we faced for the first half of the run, I was pleased to see our pace ended up just barely over 10:00/miles. I thought about pushing the run to 9-miles, since I actually felt REALLY strong (like back to marathon-training-Irish-Cream-strong), but Wilson convinced me it might actually be smart to finish the long run where we were, and thus, finish feeling like some kind of running goddess (instead of a complete and total running loser, like in recent weeks). I must admit, it was a HUGE confidence boost to feel so great throughout the entire run . . . especially given the fact that we were pushing ourselves through some crazy hills (and I, being the smart girl I am, had just run some intense stair sprints the day before). Yay, long runs (and other annoyingly giddy cheers)!

Okay, we just ate a HUGE dinner of spare ribs and red-skinned mashed potatoes, so I'm going to have to give in to the food coma that's been slowly taking over my body . . . but it couldn't hurt to, once again, wish a Happy Mother's Day to my mama, and all you other super-moms out there! Hope it was a great one!

2 comments:

The Laminator said...

Nice to hear you're back on track, Irish. Hopefully, all your nagging injury days are finally behind you and you can continue to build on your success. Congrats.

Alissa said...

Hi, just found you. You have a great blog here. Love your writing style. I'm always scanning the blogs for something to motivate me to get out there and "do it". Your blog fits the bill perfectly! LOVED the marathon tips. I've run two now (training for my 3rd), and you are right about everything!