1st Long Run

Well, we did it! We completed our very first (baby) long run. A whole 4 miles! Woohoo!

We went up to Forest Park. We had planned to start from the Zoo, run two miles on the Wildwood Trail, and then run back. Luckily, we went too late in the day and the Zoo parking lot was full. (I’ll explain the “luckily” a little later.) We looped around and parked on Burnside instead, near the “6-mile” mark. Since we were only supposed to do 4-miles, this allowed us 1-mile to warm up our legs at the start, and 1-mile to cool down at the end.

Mile 1 went by without incident. Mile 2 was killer. All uphill. When all you usually run on is flat concrete, any hill is killer. What have we learned? We need to change up our runs a bit! Now, if all had gone according to plan, and we had parked at the zoo, Mile 2 would have been Mile 4. That means we would have ended with the killer hill. Yikes! That’s why we weren’t too upset with the change of plans! We turned around after Mile 2 and enjoyed a nice downhill for Mile 3, and finished Mile 4 very comfortably. When we finished, I felt like I could go farther. We didn’t, of course. We’re building mileage slowly (as impatient as we are) to hopefully prevent injuries! *fingers crossed* But it was encouraging to finish with some energy left. Next week’s 5-miler should go ok!

Total for the week: 10 miles (due to 3 miles skipped on Wednesday)

We started our 2nd week of “Pre-Half-Marathon Training Training” today with a 3-miler on Mt. Tabor. There are 3 marked trails on Mt. Tabor (very helpful when without a Garmin). One is 3 miles, one is 1.7, and one is 1.2 (not sure about the last one). The 3-miler is marked “Difficult, stairs”. I wanted to maybe do one of the other trails a couple of times, but J was insistent on running the 3-mile trail. Ok…

It wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t easy either. When we started on a downhill at the beginning, I was already getting antsy about having to go back uphill, most likely at the end. We went around several reservoirs and paused a few times due to lack of signage… There were also a large set of stairs about a mile in. I ran up 7 of them, but walked the rest. I knew more “difficulty” lay ahead. Then it came. The killer hill at the end. Much worse then the hill from Saturday’s “Long Run”. Oy. But I did it! And without walking! It was very slow, but I didn’t stop. Boy did I want to, though! When we reached the top, we were a bit delirious, and may have accidently skipped a small loop. When we checked the map at the end, we saw a loop that neither of us could remember going around, but I couldn’t tell you where it was. Oh well!

Here’s the plan for the rest of the week:

Monday: 3 miles (check)

Tuesday: Rest day, restart push-ups, other strength training?

Wednesday: 3 miles

Thursday: 3 miles, pushups

Friday: Rest day

Saturday: 5 miles (on Springwater Corridor?)

Sunday: Rest

Good news! Whilst writing this, the mail man came and delivered our new Garmin! Woohoo! It’s currently charging, but we’ll be fiddling with it later. We’ll have a few runs to try it out on before our long run on Saturday. I’m so excited!