Double Digits

I remember the days approaching my 10th birthday and my dad continually reminding me that once I turned 10 I'd be in the double digits for the rest of my life.  I cleverly responded, "Unless I live to be 100!"  But nonetheless being double digits was very exciting and last night I relived that moment.

I ran 10 miles!!  I was only scheduled to do 9, since I did 8 last week, but my schedule is a week off because I missed a week early on.  I left the house secretly hoping I could get 10 miles out of my body but still knowing that 9 miles would have been a huge accomplishment.  My saving grace in being able to get 10 completed was that finishing 9 miles left me just 1 mile from home.  I had to get home one way or another and I figured since I was finally in the shade (maybe just a little dark too) it would be faster to just run! 

My time was 1:50:03, which is just about exactly 11 minute miles.  I still don't care about my time, but will say I would have been faster if it hadn't taken so many adjustments to get my knee brace where it felt comfortable.  I kept telling myself, "Stopping to fix your brace isn't going to help your time, but not stopping is going to hurt my chances of finishing on 10/10/10" so I sacrificed my time in order to stay injury-free.

Today marks 4 weeks from my race (2 weeks from turning 25!) and I'm getting more and more excited with each long run I complete.  My first 3 mile run to start the training, I ran to my mom's house (door to door is 3 miles!)  and it terrified me to think I'd have to get to her house, go back to mine, back to hers and then back to mine and I still wouldn't even be to the distance of a half marathon.  Also, the training schedule I've been following never has you run more than 12 miles.  At first I was scared by that because how am I supposed to run it in a race if I've never done it in practice? But last night, I was only 3.1 miles short of the official distance and believe that my endorphins and adrenaline would have gotten me through each step if I had just continued!

To continue with some lessons learned during my run like last week

• It doesn't matter to me if you live in the country, if your house is directly off the street and you have dogs, you better have a fence or another way to keep them from attacking people who may walk/run by.  I have never been more scared of a dog than I was last night.  The way the guy chased after his dogs to keep them from me (which didn't work, because they BOTH touched me) made me feel like they were dangerous and may actually attack!
• Even if you have a piercing ache in your side within the first half mile, if you keep going, it goes away and you still have the energy to finish.
• Within the depths of yourself is something magical and something I can't explain about being able to accomplish your goals!