One of the best mornings I've had in a long time!

The rest of last week was mostly spent recovering. I was very sore and stiff on Tuesday morning, and I ran anyway. It was hard. I loosened up a bit during the run, but afterwards I was more sore and stiff than I had been before! Farm work is more tiring than I thought it would be, and I realized that I REALLY needed to catch up on sleep.

So that's what I did for the rest of the week...no morning workouts, just sleeping in until it was time to start working.

Last night I was feeling a bit discouraged...I felt like marathon training wasn't fun, and that maybe I should not run a fall marathon this year. I knew that I needed to run 5-6 miles this morning, and that last weeks 4-5 miles felt really difficult, so 5-6 would probably be more so. I went to bed...

Today was my day off, which was why I planned the long run for today.

When I woke up, it felt good to lay in bed as long as I wanted. When I finally got up, I looked at the clock: 8:07 a.m. And it was the strangest thing...the sky was blue, it was bright and sunny...and I felt like going for a run! So I said, "ok, I'll do my 5-6 miles...no need to make any final decisions about a marathon yet, and I don't want to close any doors."

Here in Colorado, I really don't have a way of gauging the mileage, so I'm just going for time. Assuming a 12 minute mile, that would mean I need to run for one hour to do 5 miles. If I was REALLY slow (15 minute miles, which I highly doubt), it would be only 4 miles per hour. So my mileage is really just rough estimates. So I figured that in order to ensure that I ran 5-6 miles, I'd need to run for 1 hour and 30 minutes. So that was today's goal.

Well, I got outside, and I was determined to take it nice and easy to start, since I hadn't done any running in the past few days (just recuperating from being stiff and catching up on sleep!). I enjoyed it right away.

What a wonderful run! I discovered a trail along the Colorado river about 45 minutes into the run, so instead of turning around and going back at that point, I just kept going! I couldn't believe that it felt so easy today, after weeks of having running feel very difficult! Even though my goal was to run for 1:30 today, I didn't even turn around until 1:17! So my total run was 2 hours long today...somewhere between 8 and 10 miles, instead of the 5-6! And I thought that 5-6 would kill me =)!

This was so encouraging to me. I had a little trouble hitting the ground running after returning home from Costa Rica. I pretty much had a week and a half of very poor sleep (due to stress) that really took it's toll on my energy levels and on my recovery, and so running and training felt like huge chores and seemed to break me down even more. So having a fabulous run after a few days of good rest and recovery (and a week and a half of catching up on sleep!) reassured me that I did not lose all my endurance...my body was just plain TIRED. And now it's catching up! Excellent! And I didn't even carry any food/water with me...imagine if I had food/water! I probably would have gone farther!