My last run was 3.25 miles on Sunday and we are leaving on a mini-vacation tomorrow for 4 days. So, knowing that I wouldn't be running for a while, I knew today would be a day for running. The weather was beautiful...partly cloudy skies, gentle breeze and 75 degrees. I wanted to set a goal of 10 miles or two hours of running

. My longest distance so far has been 8.1 miles and my longest time is under an hour and a half so I was setting myself up for failure

.
I started out feeling terrible. I was winded already by the first mile, but I soon got over that hump and into my groove

. I did my 4/2 intervals consistently but had a minor hiccup. I had to walk a small distance (ran out of sidewalk for a bit on a 4-lane, 55 mph road and had to walk on a hill) and my interval timer went off and I lost track of what interval I was on. By the time I got back on track, I'd actually walked 3-4 minutes instead of 2

.
I brought Gatorade chews with me and ate 2 every 30 minutes. I don't know if it did me any good, but it gave me something to look forward to at those intervals. I hit my inhaler 3 times total which did help quite a bit. When I hit mile 7, my legs were toast

. My knees hurt, my right calf/achilles was cramping up and my toes were sore. Other than that, I wasn't winded and I felt pretty decent so I pushed on. I hit my subdivision at mile 9 and made a decision...My body was so sore and achy, I really just wanted to go home. I'd already gone further and longer than I ever have, but I knew that I want/need to to 10 miles one of these days. I decided that since I already had 9 miles behind me, I would push myself to go one lap through the subdivision. It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty, but doggone it....I DID IT



!!! I finished 10 miles in 2:12:14 which is a 13:14 pace. I'm not too thrilled with my pace since I was hoping to get 1/2 marathon time in under 13 minutes. I was hoping to keep under 13 minute miles for my distances up to 12 miles. On the other hand, like I told DH, I went 10 miles in about 2 hours 15 minutes and my goal for the half is 3 hours. This means I could have basically walked the final 3 miles and I'd have 45 minutes to do it

...That's totally doable!
What a great relief it is to get that 10-mile mark under my belt. My next goal is to try and make my regular runs 4-5 miles instead of the 3 I've been doing. The only thing I worry about is the amount of time it takes. I need to look for an hour to an hour and a half to run and that will be hard to do before work in the morning. It will be easy, though, once the kids are in school

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I got home, popped 800mg of ibuprofen, downed a Propel Zero and a 100-calorie protein shake and hopped on the computer to share with you guys

. I hope everyone has a good run (or two or three!) this weekend. I'll be WAY up in the UP of Michigan, fishing with the DH and kids

and visiting family.