147 Days – Sunday Morning Long Run

Woke up around 5:15 this morning to get ready for my long run of the week. I was tired. After finishing up a long ride last night around 10 pm I was not able to get into a good sleep until well past 11 pm. That is way past my regular bedtime. Ava was up a few times and next thing you know it was time to get up. Thank goodness Brian wanted to run with me this morning otherwise I might have very well slept in and messed up my great week of training.

I ate two pancakes, had some water and coffee and made my way to Starbucks to meet Tritt. We decided to tackle a course similar to what Chad and Katie ran a few weeks back. We did not cross any bridges, but we took off down the hill of Kimberly towards the might Mississippi River. It was a little chilly at first being only about 20 degrees, but we knew that as long as the wind stayed down and the sun started to rise we would be fine.

This was our course we ran. As we made our way to the river you can see about midway we hit a little detour and had to turn around and relocate a place to find the bike path. We hit the 5.5 mile mark in 48 minutes. I will admit that I felt tired at this point from the swim and bike ride last night and just a good week of training. We took a quick stretch break and Tritt snapped a cool photo of the sunrise.

It is quite cool to watch the sunrise early in the morning while the city is still quite calm. As the sun rises you cannot help but a little pep to your step while running. It was great to see a few nice size groups of walkers out and about as well. The river was nice and smooth and more importantly it felt great to have Tritt to have running with to keep me going. 

 

On the way back we made good time. We ran the last 5.5 in 44 minutes knocking four minutes off our return run making for a good negative split. The best part was that it felt easy. The run back felt so much easier than the run out. We were stopped by a train at mile 7.5 for a few seconds, but nothing too major.

We knocked out the run in 1:32. It felt good to be done with run before 8 am.You can see from the results that we picked up the pace each mile which is good. Even during the big hill climb back up Kimberly we were able to hold a good pace despite the incline of a few hundred feet. I stopped in Starbucks before heading home for a good old Cafe Mocha. I felt good after the run, but I knew I was in need of water and refueling. I ate some good food and need to eat again. I need to replenish this body with fluids and food before my swim class this afternoon.

I am glad to have pushed myself to get these workouts in the last few days. I went from thinking I was going to have a bad week of training to really knocking out some serious miles in 72 hours.

GETTING IT DONE! sure feels great to accomplish. I am a little sore and fatigued, but that is just a sign that I am getting this body one step closer to 70.3 Ironman shape!