First 15 Mile Run EVER!

Today I ran with Christina at North Park. We ran 2 loops together and then I ran a third loop.  We started at 7:30 this morning which was tough due to the clock change. It was so hard waking up when it was so dark.

Each 5 Mile Loop
1	0:52:41
2	0:51:50
3	0:50:41

After the first loop, Christina offered me one of those gel things to eat but it was so awful last time that I didn't want it. Then she offered to share her little gummy things with me for energy. Those were much better. I need to buy myself some of those.  They were a little hard on my jaw but I think it was because of the 33 degree weather.

I did not run 15 continuous miles because after 5 miles and after 10 miles, I stopped for water and to eat those gummy things. Based on my garmin data, I think each break was about 3 minutes.  While I was stopped, my muscles got cold so I had to bounce around and stretch before getting started again.

Christina had a long list of things to do today and specific times for certain things so she did not have time to run the last lap.

Distance	Split	Sum
1	10:36	10:36
2	10:46	21:22
3	10:49	32:11
4	10:16	42:27
5	10:14	52:41
6	10:17	1:02:58
7	10:11	1:13:09
8	10:23	1:23:32
9	10:21	1:33:53
10	10:38	1:44:31
11	10:19	1:54:50
12	10:01	2:04:51
13	10:30	2:15:21
14	10:13	2:25:34
15	09:38	2:35:12
	Avg pace	10:21

I did some math in my head and figured out that I wanted each mile at 10:30 in order to beat my last 5 mile loop time.  I was pretty sure that math was wrong (it was) so I needed to be even faster than that but I thought it was still a good number to have in my head. It was because my third loop did beat my second loop.

Post-run picture

While running, I decided I wanted to run the last mile in under 10 minutes.  My second .25 in that mile was 2:36 and I thought there was no way I'd make it up since the first .25 was at 2:28 and that was on the level not the uphill. I almost gave in then and started jogging slower, but then I didn't because I knew I'd post about it on this here blog and then everyone would know I gave up early thinking I would fail. Well I didn't give up and then I not only met my goal but beat it by over 20 seconds!

The entire last lap was pretty boring running myself. The entire time I either said good morning to people running the opposite way or did math in my head. I did math about my current run, future runs, total mileage for the week, previous runs, time of day, etc.  I'm pretty sure doing math isn't normal. I was told once that I might run faster if I quit wasting my brain on doing math and make it focus on running fast.  That might be true. But then again, if I didn't do math, I might get too bored and stop. How do you occupy your time while you are running?

I thought I'd end up having to walk during the run but I did not. I didn't plan to stop so long between loops though. During the last loop there was a little sleet/rain but not much and it only lasted a few minutes.  When we started running it was 36 degrees with a RealFeel of 31 and when I finished running it was 36 degrees with a RealFeel of 33 according to my Accuweather app.

With this 15 mile run, my weekly mileage was 24.6 miles. That's the most I've had of any week. My previous high was 21.25. This week should have been 24 (due to the long run being 10 miles even though last week the long run should have been 13 miles.)

During the third loop I didn't follow the path exactly and went straight a few times the path curved in. I figured it was OK because the Garmin's data doesn't guess how I ran and it knows how I did it.  (Loop 1 was 5.01, loop 2 was 5.01 but loop 3 was just 5.0)