Double Digits!

After a much needed morning appointment to make my hair look 10 years younger (I *really* got tired of Jeff mentioning how much gray I have :-), T and were to head out for an afternoon run. The perks of the afternoon run....sleeping in, and run in the nice warm afternoon. Temp was probably somewhere around 65 (sorry Rob) when we finally made our way to the trail.

I was scheduled for a 10-miler today. My first double digit run in....I gotta' say...probably months. I was a wee bit apprehensive. Well, more just wondering how my body would hold up....IF it would hold up.

This was a long, easy run with some tempo work thrown in for *fun*. Amazing how slow I have to go to keep my heart rate in Zone 1.....and my Zone 1 goes pretty high. Yeah, I have a genetically high heart rate. No, really. It's true. Ask T.

So, the run was 30 minutes in Zone 1, 30 minutes in zone 2, 30 minutes in Zone 3 and then back to Zone 1/2 for the rest of the 10 miles. Zone 1 was fairly agonizingly slow. Slow, as in, I could power walk faster than I was 'running.' Zone 2 was pretty comfortable. By the time I hit my Zone 3 interval I really had to get my legs moving. And I never really got past my midpoint of Zone 3. My legs just didn't want to go any faster. I was certainly ready to drop back to zone 2 at the end of that 30 minutes.

By mile 9 of the run, I was pretty much done. I didn't want to run anymore. My knees were achy, my heel was achy, my right hip was giving me grief, I was just tired in general and so ready to stop. But T was an awesome sherpa (having needed to 'only' run 90 minutes today) keeping me moving until I hit my 10 miles. I can't even imagine how I'll be able to run 26.2 miles. Can.not.imagine. Sigh. One step at at time. I guess that's how I have to do it. One step at a time.....all the way to 12 miles on Saturday. *gulp*