On My Way

I'm such a bad blogger. Oh hey, March, where'd you come from? Anyway, I'm sitting on the floor of my room, legs feeling like jello after an 8 mile run. It's my first time running 8 miles. In fact, two weeks ago, the long run for the weekend was a 10K. Lazy me skipped that long run and didn't train that hard the following week. The following weekend, I was home in Arlington and was able to run the bike trail for 7 miles. I was so frickin' proud of that 7 miles...that slowwww 7 miles...but hey, I didn't stop once. Well, I swore to myself that I was going to train this week. And then midterms happened, sending me into a crazed, stressed, sleepless (well not really, but I averaged 5 hrs a night) week. I did not go to the gym or run ONCE this week. Nope. I felt bad for having not worked out at all, but I was too stressed and too tired to care too much. But then the thought of the half marathon being on April 9th kind of freaked me out. So today I ran 8 miles. I started out on some seriously hilly terrain...C'ville certainly doesn't lack hills. By mile 3, I was running at a snail's pace up an incline, but then I sort of went into "my legs are going numb" mode where I stopped feeling them too much. This got me to mile 5.5 where I decided I was getting ridiculously tired, especially after having to make a wide circle around this stupid car wash some high school kids were doing. By mile 6.5 I was faced with another ridiculous incline, which is what I walked up. But then I ran pretty much the entirety the rest of the way, stopping for water once at the gym as I passed it. So despite my couple of stops, I finished the 8 miles in about 1.5 hours. I find it ridiculous/awesome that my body can exercise for THAT long!! A month ago, I wouldn't have imagined my body could do this--that I could push myself this hard. To tell you the truth, I was even skeptical about following the training plan I had found. But...it has worked. I am completely on schedule for my half training. This week I plan on dedicating a fair amount of time to training as it's spring break and I'll actually have some free time (omg). So there you have it. I'm so damn proud of myself. It was also a beautiful day outside to run. Partly sunny, not too windy, not too cold.

On a different note, I need to figure out how to successfully carry water with me. I hate holding things when I run though. I've seen people with strappy water bottles around their waste...but that looks expensive. Meh. Also! I realized what my running mantra is. When I get tired, I start repeating "just keep running" over and over. It works...go figure. Ok, have a good weekend workout, everyone!