It was an excellent day for a (long) run!

We had the best long run yesterday. I won't tell you that it was easy, 'cause after all, it was a long run, but it was so, so, so much better than last week's long run.

For starters, it was wonderful run weather. High's in the 50's, only slight breeze to cool us and barely a cloud in the sky. You couldn't not have asked fora better day.

Next, Heather mapped out a new route for us, so it was not the same series of two very long, very painful uphill climbs from last week. In fact, if you look at the elevation chart, you can see that there was really only one crazy uphill around mile 7. It was one of our few downhills from last week - only taken in the opposite direction. Fortunately for me, I have no shame when it comes to walking hills! Yes, I will try to run as much of them as I can, but when my heart starts to feel like it's going to jump right out of my chest, I don't mind walking for at least part of something that brutal.

 

Heather had originally mapped out a run that was slightly over 12¾ miles long. A little longer than we were really looking for, but we figured that whatever past 12 miles we weren't feeling up to we would just walk. Well, around mile 9 happened on a dog-leg trail that leads back to the main Salmon Creek trail. Since we were in need of water and bathrooms by this point, we decided to take the dog-leg instead of sticking to our original street route. What we didn't realize at the time is that this little "shortcut" trail was much longer than either one of us had imagined. We had seen it while driving by in the past and figured it was just a little jaunt to take you back to the original trail... but that was not the case! By the time we did this dog-leg and then ran on the Salmon Creek trail instead of the much more direct road route we had originally intended, we had ended up adding over a full mile to our route yesterday. This means something that started out being a little over 12 ended up being closer to 14 miles. Yikes!

Anyway, once we were back on the trail and had figured out that we were going to be way over out miles for the day, we resolved to run the originally intended 12 and then just walk whatever was left. This turned out to be fortuitous on our part... just past the 12 mile stopping point, the road we were on went up a very steep incline which would have been absolutely miserable to run up... especially by the time we were in mile 11 or 12 as we had originally planned it to be. Also, Heather reminded me that there was a McDonald's on our way home... past the 12 mile point, so we had no hesitation in stopping to pick up jumbo Cokes for the walk home... thanks Heather... I owe you one!

We got back to the house only slightly the worse for the extra two miles of wear. But I must say that despite the unplanned extra distance, I would gladly do this route again... especially if there's a McDonald's soda waiting for us as a reward on the way home!

Yesterday's Run
12.0 Miles
2:25:00
5.0 mph

Yesterday's Walk
2.0 Miles
0:39 (including the McD's stop!)