I Did It! Ten Miles - CHECK!

I am still riding high on the endorphins from my first 10 mile run yesterday! It feels so good to have reached yet another ‘rookie milestone’. Even better is that there is so much still yet to come.

On Saturday, I finally bought my OWN MP3 player, so I could stop mooching off my daughter or the hub’s players. All I had were my own earphones ….and then I would grab whichever device had the most charge on it for my runs. I justified this purchase by changing the 18 year wedding anniversary gift tradition from ‘porcelain’ to ‘electronics’. I’m not a big fan of the iPod, and I really like the player I got for Mike on his birthday, so I got the same one as his, in pink. (now known as “L’il Pink” ). It’s an 8GB Sony.

I spent Saturday afternoon loading up tunes, mapping my route and gathering all my schtuff. I was so excited and looking forward to this run!

I woke up at 5:30 Sunday morning and checked the weather, poured some coffee, ate a PowerBar and read the paper. I had a couple of thoughts about this run….

1) RELAX and enjoy the run.
2) Take it slow, especially in the beginning

I took plain water with me this time, and 2 Gu’s. I have read recently that the Gu’s metabolize faster/better with plain water. That would explain why I had been feeling like the Gu's weren’t working for me before, because I was taking PowerAide on my runs instead of plain water.

I made a hasty last second decision to hit my puffer before I headed out. First hit of the season, ugh. I was feeling vaguely ‘wheezy’ in the chest, and with everything blooming and all the freshly cut lawns, I felt like I would need it. I have noticed a bit of heaviness and burning in the lungs over the last few runs, and I know this is allergy stuff just like I experienced in the fall. This turned out to be the best thing I did and perhaps I should have been starting on the puffer 2-3 weeks ago. Yes I'm an adult onset athlete with adult onset allergic asthma. NICE.

Anyway, I was out the door at 6:45, and I had a good 15 minute warm up walk with some running strides before I hit the button on the Garmie. The weather was awesome – it was 54 degrees, no wind. It was perfect. I love Sunday mornings.

The route I had mapped out was perfect because there were perfectly located pit stops if I needed them. After the first 2 miles, I was in the groove – it really takes me awhile to get to that ‘sweet spot’, but I was very careful to go out slow and not increase my pace too soon. At mile 3, I ran by a group of kids on the front lawn of a church, doing a 24 hour teeter-totter marathon to raise money. I thought this was VERY cool, and stopped to give them a dollar and take a picture of their sign. I told the parents in the group that maybe that’s the sort of marathon I should be doing, and they said no, they should be doing what I was doing!

I was running towards Lake Erie, so the first 5 miles was basically all downhill. I had to work hard to keep it slow, because I was going to need the energy to get back – which of course would be going back ‘up’. I reached my halfway point in 1:05, so I was keeping a nice steady and slow pace. My tunes were AWESOME – I had the player on shuffle and every song that came up was exactly PERFECT for each moment. Love when that happens! For example, right after I gave my dollar to the teeter totterers, the song ‘Give a Little Bit’ by Supertramp came on. This run was filled with little moments like that. (And incidentally, Supertramp is awesome to run with!)

I have to digress a minute here on the topic of the tunes…I didn’t even remember that I had put a couple of old Prince tunes on my player. So when the song ‘Purple Rain’ came up, I spent an entire mile or more lost in smiles and giggles remembering some fun times. Purple Rain was the most awesome, longest slow dance tune back in The Day. Remember? If you were lucky enough to be ‘attached’, it was the best slow dance, lol. For the un-attached girls in the group…it was time to cue up the ‘air band’ complete with a keyboard player (that was me usually), a guitar player, a drummer and of course EVERYone sings for Purple Rain. Loud, dramatic, soulful singing and swaying: “Honey I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW, times are changin….’ Of course the air band was always at it’s best after a few 10 cent beers at the bar….oh yes, good times. And then a little while later I hear ‘Baby I’m a Star’ and that pretty much got me through miles 6 and 7.

Baby I'm a (star)

Might not know it now

Baby you’ll find out, I'm a (star)

I don't want to stop, 'til I reach the top

Sing it (We are all a star!)

With all this rockin' out ....I glanced at the Garmie and saw that I was running a 9:30 pace! YIKES. Cool, but not so much, because I was starting to get tired and had lots of uphill yet to do. What was great though is that for awhile there, I was on autopilot. Just cruising along, almost like I was not even running at all. That was a great feeling!

Here's a shot taken along Lake Rd, which is a great place to run because there are lots of big trees and large beautiful old homes, and then some randomness like this :

But then, Miles 8 and 9 were both going up gradually – away from the lake, and I had to take a few walk breaks and I was getting tired. I took a Gu at mile 8 and that helped give me a little kick. I did a mental form check from head to toe: relax, relax, relax. Lighten up and loosen up. Shoulders back, open up the chest, breathe – relax. That helped immensely. By the time I was finishing up mile 9, I knew it was mostly mental from there. I started getting a little negative, thinking, holy shiz, there’s no way I have 3 more miles in me if this were the ½! Right about then, the 'universe' spoke to me again with the right song and a street sign of all things...and I thought, well how cool is THIS? Let's get this done!

I reminded myself that I was running TEN today. Not 13.1. I didn’t go all this way, on this day, to walk the last mile! So I put my game face on and pulled out that last mile, finishing 10 in 2:10:38. I wasn’t really all concerned about my time for this run, however, I am feeling pretty hopeful that I *may* be able to do the half in 2:45 or less. It will depend on the factors of the day, but it doesn’t really matter, because my original goal was to finish in under 3 hours. So I feel pretty confident about that at least.

And as I hit the stop button on my watch, I put my hands in the air and celebrated right there on the damn sidewalk. I just ran TEN MILES! How cool is that? And it felt good! I was never very challenged physically until the last 2 miles, and I somehow found the mental strength to get through it. Plus, I still had another mile to walk it out to my house, so it was nice to have that time to reflect on the run, and savor my milestone moment. Here is a snapshot of the elevation for this run, and really the only downside of the route is the last 2 miles uphill. It was tough! Sorry for the blurriness, but you get the idea....the downhill was much more gradual than the uphill climb.

It was a great run though. I still can’t believe I did it – I was supposed to run 9 last weekend and wasn’t able to do it…so I was basically jumping from 8 miles to 10 but I was determined to do this, and enjoy it at the same time.

The hubby and I celebrated 18 years of marital bliss yesterday, and he pulled out our wedding picture and said, ‘did THIS girl ever think that she would run 10 miles for fun on a Sunday morning at the crack of dawn?’.

The answer? NO WAY.

I spent the remainder of the day visiting my newest niece and chatting with family. Then I took Alison to shop for her very first 'formal' dress for her 8th grade dance (oh brother) in a couple of weeks. I was on my feet all day - didn't really get to rest until early evening when I finally sat down with my first glass of wine in a long time, and continued to bask in my accomplishment.

It was a great day. I can't wait to do it again!