8 Miler

After coaching my soccer game (to a rousing tie) I met Ryan at the local county park and we went running. We walked a warm-up mile and then ran 4.0 miles, looping back to our cars and grabbing a water break. Running the 4.0 miles in about 8:53 pace. Then we went back for the next loop - and it was hard to get our bodies moving. I think it was the past few days of really bad but yummy food and the large amounts of beer we consumed. But we ran, and Ryan was felling better during this loop so he kept pushing the pace. I struggled to keep up with him at times. After the big hill he was so excited to be about 1 mile from being done he really pushed the pace. I told myself to catch up to him and so I pushed my pace and caught up. The result was that he decided to go faster. I somewhat decided to go faster too since it was just a downhill and a flat straightaway remaining. And so we pushed out the run, it was uncomfortable body-wise but our lungs and hearts handled it well. We did the last mile in 7:57 pace.

When all was said and done we had run our 8.0 miles in 1:08:50 - averaging 8:36 pace. We then walked the final mile back to the cars - and we were struggling. Our legs felt so tired and didn't want to move at all, we walked most of it but did decide to jog about a quarter mile in the middle. By the end of the walked mile we were both feeling like we could barely move our bodies any more. We stretched for a few minutes, a midst a number of groans. Then we went home.

I got really sunburned on my face and neck between the soccer game and the run. I wanted sunblock but it was all at home so it was useless.  It was nice to have the sun and heat, except for sometimes during the run when we were especially tired. At those moments Ryan shouted "Go away sun!" but it didn't listen. It was bright, and hot, and a challenge. The one hope we held on to was that before the actual Half Marathon we won't eat really bad food or drink a lot of beer. We think that between the proper eating and the hydration we'll do much better.

New Miles: 10.0
Total Miles: 1041.5
Miles Remaining: 458.5
Weight: 128.0