What a day, what a day

Deep breath....ok, here we go.

The alarm went off at 5:30am this morning so I could leave myself enough time to run up to 9 miles if I felt good enough and then get to my internship on time. It was kind of funny because I was anxious about the run...I've taught myself how to relax, but for some reason I just felt like I was freaking out a bit about this long run.

Ok - this is no big deal. We've done this many times before, just relax and let your feet lead the way.

After I rolled out of bed, I drove out to mile 6 so I could hide a little water bottle in the bushes because I'm experimenting with the GU gel packs for the marathon. While I was driving out there, the radio was playing "How You Remind Me" by Nickelback and that helped to ease my nerves because that song was popular during my senior year of cross country in high school. It just took me back to all the good times I had with my teammates.

Overall, the run was pretty lonely...not many people are up and at 'em at 6am on a Saturday morning. Then again, I did run along some less traveled roads south of campus. Somewhere between 2 and 3 miles, I came across a herd of cows that were all laying by the fence, and they all just stared at me as I ran by. It was actually kind of creepy because like I said, there was nobody else around...but they're cows, what are they really gonna do? For most of the first 5 miles, I was worried about my leg (there's the anxiety again) and it seemed to be holding up well...but the worrying made me think that something was gonna happen. Around mile 5.5, I finally saw another runner and actually caught up to her right at mile 6...though I think I scared her because I didn't pass her and I had to veer off into the bushes to get my water bottle to wash down my gel pack. Oops :) This was my first time consuming a gel pack on the run, and I found it to be simple but sort of awkward, but I guess that goes for everything you try to eat on the run. It was also a blessing in disguise because I realized that once I started thinking about the gel pack, all the bad thoughts regarding my legs had disappeared, and I finished pretty strong....I ended up running all 9 miles!

Final stats...
Mile 3.75 ---- 28:43 (7:39 min/mile)
Mile 6 ---- 45:33 (7:35 min/mile)
Mile 9 ---- 1:08:03 (7:34 min/mile)

I went out slow because I hadn't run this long in a while (March 27 to be exact) and then started to go faster once I realized that I was feeling alright, but it turns out that I was overall pretty consistent. The marathon plan wanted me to do a pace of 7:17 min/mile, but I'm satisfied with 7:34.

Enough about the run....after that, I spent 14 hours at my internship. LONG DAY! Tonight we took the campers to the Lansing Lugnuts minor league baseball game, and getting them back to campus was a nightmare with all the traffic and construction going on. We should've gotten back by 10, but we had to scramble for a bus and didn't get back til 10:30. So yes...very long day and I deserve some good sleep tonight. Tomorrow is Ele's Race 5K, so my next post will be a combo of what the race is about as well as some tidbits about the results.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....