Long Run - 7-18-09

Less than 100 days until the Marine Corps Marathon and the training is really starting to get serious.

I woke up this morning at 4:00am and quietly made my way around my dark house. Trying not to wake up my wife and five year old son takes a lot of work. I used my cell phone as a light and tried to be as quiet as possible as I got dressed, drank my water and ate a little food. My cat and dog are not as quite and are pretty anxious for me to feed them each morning. I managed not to trip over my pets or anything else and made it out the door at 4:45am.

The group I run with on Saturdays has really thinned out. Seems that not as many people are interested in waking up this early or running twelve miles. There were only five of us today.

We had decided to run the first couple of miles together and then brake into two groups (six miles at either 10:30+ or 12:30+ pace). For the last four miles everyone would run at their own marathon pace (or close to it).

The first two miles were pretty slow (13:06, 12:43), but being with the group is nice and this was a nice area to run together (we passed two drunk guys in a golf cart coming back from a party and a few people fishing from the pier).

We picked it up for the next six miles (10:40, 10:22, 10:30, 10:35, 10:42, 10:45) and went over to Sullivan's Island. I ran on my own for the last four miles and just wanted to stay near my marathon pace, but not over do it (9:05, 9:09, 9:06, 9:20).

This was a great run through the Old Village and over to Sullivan's Island. The weather was really nice and there was a breeze for most of the run.