Sometimes I even amaze myself! :o)

Well, anyone that knows me, knows I've been dreading this milestone for days (if not weeks). I talked about it most of last week. Well, the day came that I actually had to run a 10 miler... and you know what? It went really well. Actually much better than I had thought it would.

I should confess, though, that this thing was unfortunately, done entirely on the treadmill. I had honestly planned to do a 50/50 mix (or thereabouts) of indoor and outdoor running. But, Sunday afternoon it started dumping rain and it continued all of yesterday without ever letting up. Even worse than me not getting outside is the fact that there's now bunches of flooding around the area.

Here's some of what I did yesterday that I suspect really helped me in my run:

1. Green Smoothie (of course)! - But this time I added a little soy milk into the mix - gave it that extra punch of protein.
2. Made sure I was well hydrated ahead of time
3. Had one bite of a high performance Power Bar right before starting
4. Had another bite of the bar halfway through the run
5. Hydrated with Gatorade through the run - but not too much! I've been known to do that too and just end up feeling miserable while I run and have a sloshy belly. Ew!
6. Intermixed the Gatorade w/ straight water. I don't like the sticky feeling Gatorade leaves in my mouth (even the G2 version), so a little water to rinse the G2 down
7. On a more personal note, my monthly cycle also affect how well I run and right now I'm at a place in the month where I always do well... so that has to be taken into consideration as well

As for how I made it through 10 grueling, boring miles on the treadmill? I changed up my speed all over the place, breaking intervals down into 5-minute chunks of time... it's not a cure-all for the boredom, but I really didn't want to re-live the hypothermia that Heather experienced when she ran a half-marathon in this kind of weather last fall... it was well worth a little boredom.

What's next? Well, I think there's an eleven miler coming up on the horizon (aka next week)... let's hope it can go even half as well!


Yesterday's Run
Miles: 10.00 (yep, it's still going up!)
Time: 1:58
Pace: 5.1 mph (whaddya know, this one's going up too!)
Treadmill  Run