A 13.1 Mile Training Run (Instead of Yoga)

So today was strange...

I decided there wasn't enough time to go to my one hour yoga class, so I decided to run a half marathon instead. Let me explain..

First of all, the sky looked like this. Amazing and beautiful and I could see BLUE and sunlight and oh my god it was just gorgeous. I kept thinking, do I really want to be stuck in a dark room with a bunch of sweaty people doing the same old yoga I've been doing for two weeks now? And my heart said no. 

I literally got as far as rolling up my yoga mat to walk out the door when I just listened to what my body actually wanted to do, and stopped myself. I wanted to run. There was no way I was going to ignore the urge to run and let this sunny day to go waste.

I quickly changed into my running gear, strapped on my water belt, grabbed some Clif Shot Bloks, and set my Nike Plus app to go 10 miles*. I thought I would break it up into four 2.5 mile runs. 2.5 miles south, then back up north towards my apartment - to give myself a chance to back out if I wasn't feeling good - and then 2.5 more miles north, and end it with 2.5 miles south.

*From my original schedule, I was behind by 20 miles total, if not more. Most recently, I was supposed to run 12 miles on Sunday and I didn't. I needed sleep and I felt like shit. I didn't even go to yoga that day. Shame on me. I figured since my last long run was 7 miles, that I should instead complete 9 miles on Monday. Well, instead of doing 4.5 miles there-and-back, I decided to bump it to 5 - round it out to an even 10, right?

Ever since I came back from Vegas, I've been skipping scheduled runs left and right. I was following a Hal Higdon plan for marathons that are run 6 weeks apart from each other. Well, hello. I'm not running another marathon. I'm running a half! So skipping a few runs from my rigorous running schedule was bound to happen.

Anyways. I started running until I got to the point where I usually stop and turn around. Well, I didn't feel like turning around. I wanted to see how far the trail went. I knew the I-90 trail was around there somewhere, but I hadn't found it yet. Challenge accepted. So I kept running. And I literally had to go like .1 more miles and there it was!! So I followed it. And I nearly got to go across the whole I-90 bridge, y'all!

At first I considered only going to the 5 mile mark and then turning around to make it the planned 10 miles. But then I realized, hey, I could run 6 miles and totally just make up my 12 mile run that I didn't do yesterday! And then I was like, hey, if I extend it by only .55 miles after that, then I could run a half marathon!! I was feeling good and decided to just do it.

It was so cool. It was hilly and challenging and I made great time. Considering this was just a hilly training run (and I only really decided to make it a half marathon around the 5 mile mark), this makes me SO much more confident that I can break 2 hours in the half on December 1st. Shaving off 2 minutes and 19 seconds seems doable to me. It would be a new record for me! :)

All in all... great run. I love feeling like this!!