Pushing the long run to Monday

That weekend long run? Yeah. It never happened. I came up with excuses.

Saturday? Too much rain during prime running hours and a must-see Badger victory once it actually did stop raining. Sunday? I don't really have an excuse. Some rain in the morning. And it looked iffy in the afternoon. So I decided to go running shoe shopping instead.

So it's now Monday and there's still a 9 mile run on my training schedule just waiting to be run. I got up this morning and kept putting it off. And I had a few things to do in the early afternoon. So when the clock struck 4 p.m., it wasn't raining and I still hadn't run those miles. I knew I had to do it. Because I can't really bail on a long run, especially when I've had the last three days off of work.

It was time.

It was overcast when it came time to run. At first I debated about heading over to the YMCA and running on the indoor running track. I've been up at my parents' house the last few days, so at least it would be a new running track. But it didn't look like it was going to start pouring buckets anytime soon. So I decided to do a 5 or 6 mile loop and stay kind of close to home. That way if it started to pour, I could head back to Mom and Dad's and finish up the run on their treadmill. And if the rain held off, I could just add some extra loops to finish out the 9 miles.

I ended up running all 9 miles outside. And let me tell you, it was wonderful. I don't get to do too many non-weekend runs outside due to the fact that there are no sidewalks in my neighborhood and I really don't feel like becoming road kill. But the roads I was running on this afternoon didn't have heavy traffic, so even as it was getting dusky, I was OK. The roads that did have heavy traffic had sidewalks. And once it started getting dark I was actually on a bike path that runs alongside the road, so I wasn't fearing for my life. I finished up the 9 miles in 1 hour, 45 minutes.

I was pretty happy with my mile splits. The first four miles were all in the 10:30/mile range. Once I finished up four, I started to throw in some short walk breaks every mile and the times creeped up a bit as a result. But they were still OK times. I did struggle during Miles 7 and 8 and took some longer walk breaks (Mile 7 is also where I took my mint chocolate GU), but that final mile actually felt pretty good.

So 9 miles is in the books. I might sneak in a short recovery type run tomorrow. But most likely that will be indoors on the treadmill since the weatherman is telling me to expect storms and steady 40 mph winds, with gusts up to 60 mph. And since I really don't want to get blown away, I'll stay inside.