Marathon Training Week Nine

We ran 12 miles today! And I ran the whole thing! Woohoo!

Again, I am so grateful to Landon for running those 10 miles with me on Monday night, because without that I don't think I would have had the confidence/mental state to run the entire 12 today. In fact, I'm pretty certain I would have walked. So, thank you, thank you, thank you again, babe. You are too good to me.

This week has been a pretty good running week. On Tuesday I did my 3 miles at the gym--they were a little slower than I wanted, about a 10:30 pace, but it was ok. On Wednesday we had 6 miles, but we ended up walking three with two of our good friends, Lauren and Brady, who were out walking in the same neighborhood, and then running the last 3, which was perfect. I wish all of our 6 mile runs could go like that, haha! Landon and I ran the last 3 together though, which was a lot of fun--I slowed him down a little because we did a 9:14 pace, but for me that was fast, so I was excited. And then, on Thursday night we ran out 3 miles around 9pm and I was able to run them around a 9:18 pace, which I felt pretty good about. However, next week we're going to try and put more hours between our Thursday night run and our long run on Saturday, and take it a little easier to rest up for our long runs.

Today we got up around 530am (by far the earliest we've ever gotten up to run!) and drove out to where we did our run on Wednesday night because they had a 1.25 mile track and we could see each other the whole time, so Landon would know if I, you know, got kidnapped or something, instead of in our neighborhood, where we'd never see each other after the first mile. Anyway, we had 9 and 3/4 laps to do today and my garmin wasn't working right, so I just put on my Ipod and ran and ended up with about 11:30 minute miles, maybe a little under, according to my Ipod stopwatch. I was going pretty slow the whole time, but actually felt good until about lap 6. That's when my legs started getting tired and by lap 9 my joints were starting to hurt, but I kept telling myself I was ok and not tired and to keep going--I'm trying to encourage myself in my head instead of tell myself how tired I am and how much longer I have to go, and I think it worked! The last 3 laps or so were hard and it got HOT outside, but we made it! Woohoo!

I finished about 16 minutes after Landon and during my last lap he walked over to Lauren and Brady's house, just down the road, and managed to snag us some cold water and then wait for me at our finish line. I was never so happy to see him--and to see the water! I'm telling ya'-- I've got the best husband ever.

And 3 months from today, on October 11th, I can't wait to see him waititng for me at the finish line of the Chicago Marathon and to celebrate with him afterwords!!