Everything is coming up Kelly

Had a GREAT run this morning. I slept until almost 7 and felt rested when I woke up. That makes such a difference, I'm learning. I can make myself do a lot of things without enough sleep but running in the morning just isn't one of them. Tuesday is hill day. I always dread this training run. But I was blessed with a humidity-free morning and a mild temp so that gave me hope that I could pull it off.

The first mile always sucks. Always. I could train for the rest of my life and get in peak physical condition and the first mile will still always suck. The first mile of my hill course is pretty much all uphill and that makes it suck even more. Even with the nice cool morning I was hating life trudging up that hill. A lot of bad thoughts passed through my mind on that first mile: Why did I sign up to do this? How bad would it look if I quit? Why wasn't I genetically blessed where I could not exercise and still be in good shape? It's a lot of internal whining on that first mile and it takes as much mental strength as it does physical to get up that first hill.

But! It turned around. Spectucularly, I must say. Here's my splits for the run:

Check out that 4th mile! That's what I'm talking about! I'm happy with my splits for the rest of the run too but I like seeing anything in the 9s. It shows me that I'm getting stronger and a little faster. My overall pace for today was 10:23/mile, a 17-second improvement from last week. I'm still shooting for an overall 11 min/mile pace for the marathon and the more time I can spend in the 10s now will help even out the end of the race when I'm back up in the 12s. It's going to happen, I'm realistic about that. 26.2 miles is a looooong way to go.

I finally got an accurate visual of this loop, the sun must have been in the right spot today because usually the GPS gets a little wonky on this route. It may not look severe but trust me, that's a lot of freaking hillwork to cover in a short run.

When I have a run like this before I start my work day I feel fantastic. I feel like I really accomplished something and that it's going to be a good day. I feel like everything is coming up Kelly! :)