Long runs

This evening I decided that I needed to put in a longer run. After months of rehabbing my leg/knee my runs have been almost pain-free. Certainly not any of the pain that was present for a couple months before the actual injury. The leg held up great the entire nine miles.

I didn’t run it in a remarkable time, but I was finished in about 1:40 on a hilly trail route. I prefer to be more around 1:30 but this will do. Typically I can drop a minute or two off each mile when I’m racing so that’s putting me at a decent time if I run the Rocky Raccoon 25K next month.

This week I’m in trial for a felony, so I don’t know how many miles I’ll be running during the week. Thankfully I can let some stress out this coming weekend on the trails!

Today was an easy 20 mile run in the park. When I woke up this morning I didn’t plan on running anything more than 7 miles. But the weather was too nice to skip an afternoon outside.

I’m not training for anything, so I took the run at a slower pace. I started by the outside of Huntsville Park and ran to the outer trail twice. After each lap I ended it by sprinting up the highway access road to the national forest entrance and back. This made it just over 20 miles.

My first lap was done in 1:30 for a 9:00 minutes per mile pace. This was too slow, so I pushed the second lap a little harder and finished it in 1:25 for a 8:30 m/mile pace. On each of them I splited the 8th mile to push it extra hard. The first lap I ran the 8th in 8:02 minutes and the second lap I ran it in 7:45. Not too shabby.

What a good day outside. I’m thinking about signing up for a trail half marathon to have a fun race to run during the summer. Too bad it’ll involve some travel.

I had fun on my long run this evening. I enjoyed it because even though I was alone, I ran into a lot of people on the trails. One girl mentioned that she liked my shoes as they were the same type of Brooks as mine. Later I came across another woman who let me know that she wasn’t going to run much further because she was tired. I recognized her from some local races, but I hadn’t spoken to her before today.

For my second loop, I found a few guys from my running group and ran with them. It was a fun long run.

I went on a 21 mile run with a friend yesterday. We’re getting a final long run in before the Rocky Raccoon 50 mile race. Even though Huntsville got a lot of rain, the trail conditions at the Rocky Raccoon are still good. We only had a couple puddles that we had to run around. It was a great run.

I cut my long run a little short yesterday. Although I planned on running 21 miles, I went about 19 miles. It was a good day for running. I ran three different loops (2 7-mile loops and one 5 mile loop) and met up with some friends. It was fun to get this long run out of the way for my race on Saturday.

The long run is usually pretty fun. I don’t know why I dread it. It’s relaxing because I will usually do it on my own with a slightly reduced pace. That’s nice. What sort of stinks is how much time it takes from my day and how it can make me sore.

This weekend will be a 14 mile long run. The following weekend I will run 21 miles. Then, I think the next weekend is a race of 31 miles. That should get me ready for my upcoming 24 hour run.