Day Nine

Miles: 6
Time: 48:46
Pace: 8:07
Splits: 7:33, 8:12, 8:26, 8:13, 8:15, 8:03

I have no idea how that first mile ended up being so much faster than the rest of my miles. Oops. So much for consistent mile splits... :/

I mapped out my run about 15 minutes before I left, and decided I wanted to go down to the trail to get to the other side of the river and run around down there a bit. I got to Czech Village and went out past there. I've never been down there before (for anything) so it was fun to look around. I managed to map a quarter-mile long hill into my route though... so double oops. (It was soon remedied by a nice downhill about a tenth of a mile afterwards.) At the bottom of the hill, these two old people waved me over and asked me if I knew where the fire that morning had been. I said I didn't know there had been a fire (after asking what they had said about four times because I suck at hearing/they had about five teeth between the two of them). Then they left and I continued on.

It was mostly cloudy outside, probably about two miles of my run were sunny-ish though. It was around 50 degrees with a slight breeze. It was pretty much perfect for running. It kept my legs cold (ran in shorts today... my leggings were bugging me yesterday) but my arms got hot in a long-sleeve tech shirt. I didn't even need a cold weather hat today, which was nice.

I had to stop about 5 times, though. Twice because my shin was bugging me (it stopped bugging around 3 miles, though, and that was good) but the rest were all traffic-related stops... which were just annoying. I felt really good today; my knee didn't even really bug me. It started to get tight around 5.3 miles, but then didn't get worse the rest of the last leg of the run. That made me pretty happy. (I iced my knee anyway... now it is red and frozen.)

See my route on my arm!

Day 2

Miles: 7

Time: 1:02:34

Pace: 8:56

Splits: 8:32, 8:53, 9:10, 8:43, 9:12, 9:14, 8:50

A pretty decent run, but my legs didn't seem to want me to run at all. I started out and my shin under my knee felt really weak and weird, but that went away (thank God). Around my left knee and my left quad/hip got really tight the last 2.5 or so miles, though, and that kind of ruined it for me. It didn't hurt, really, but it made me feel slow and miserable.

But we started off from next to my dorm and went off campus and to Bever Ave, which is a really cool street (though, we found, mostly all a slight incline). There are HUGE, beautiful houses down there and it's a really cute neighborhood to run through. Then we went through Bever Park... where I accidently had thrown in a HUGE HILL at mile 3 when I mapped the route. My dad and I go to the top and we could hardly breathe. I apologized profusely. I'd totally forgotten that park had a hill, and it kicked my ass.

Most of then run after that was flat, though, just a little bit of hills around another college in the area that we ran around. My leg was all tight and bothersome, but I tried not to whine about it. It is just troublesome because that leg never gave me problems during all of cross country season. But it might just be because I took the last week off, so it's just out of practice.

Either way, we still managed to pace under 9 minute miles and we got back to campus at 7 miles on the dot (even though we accidently took two detours and had to make up where to go next to get back on track). I still have all the streets written (in Sharpie) on my arm:

Out of ten stars, I'd give this run about a 7.5. It could have been better, physical-body wise, but it didn't feel like a long run. But the scenery was nice, generally speaking, and the weather was AMAZING. Probably right around 55-60 degrees. Is this seriously November?!