Just another Saturday run

I was kind of nervous this morning getting ready for my run. I'm in the next phase of training and it's definitely getting more intense. I've been confident with my 10-milers but jumping up to 12 today was a step outside my comfort zone. On the drive to the trail I cycled through all kinds of defeating thoughts: if I can't do the 12 today I won't be able to do 13 in 2 weeks. If I can't do 13, that's only halfway, how am I going to go 26.2? And so on, and so on.

Fortunately, the weather was perfect -- in the 60s when I started, so I didn't have that to add to my list of worries. When I got going though I felt a calm come over me and I knew it would be a good run. I told myself that it was just another Saturday run and to do the best I could. I think the best favor I've been doing for myself mentally is to get out of the habit of counting down miles. If I hit the first mile marker and though "Great, 11 more to go" it would have been a LONG 11 miles. There were a lot of times I couldn't remember what mile I was on and that was really nice. There were long periods of time in my run today that I just let my head go vacant (I know, if you know me you probably think my head is vacant all the time, believe it or not there's usually *something* going on in there). I like that too. It's a cool feeling to slow down brain activity and give yourself over to pure kinetics.

It ended up being a GREAT run. 12.03 miles. I switched my route up a little and did 4 miles out-and-back in one direction so I could refill my bottle with gatorade at mile 8 and do the last 4 as an out-and-back in the opposite direction. That was a nice change of scenery and it broke the run up into smaller, manageable sections. I was glad I did that because I drank almost as much in the last 4 miles as I did for the first 8. Makes sense, the longer I'm out there the more dehydrated I'm getting. My overall pace was 10:50/mile which I'm thrilled about since that's about what it was last week and I added 2 extra miles on for distance. It actually would have been a few seconds faster because it took me over 2 minutes to make that refill stop. That's okay though, anything under 11 is great for me, especially as the distances get longer. I'm seeing consistency in my pace and that gives me hope for that 11 min/mile pace I'm shooting for at NYC.

Here's my route with some nice hillwork for a long run:

And here's my splits:

My splits all look pretty good, mile 9 is high because that includes my refill stop. Other than that, it's pretty consistent. Oddly, my best mile was the last one where I usually slow down because I'm tired. That gives me hope too.

Now for some deck time with my Coolata (my Saturday indulgence) and a book. Nice.