Sunday December 11th 9 MILES!

Okay...... wow. So I woke up still coughing but determined to run my 9 miles. I had some breakfast, drank water and was ready to go. Drew was up for it too. He has also been sick and missed the past few long runs due to being sick and the space mission.

So I stretch and off we go. Since I haven't run in a week and Drew had been sick, I felt that it would be best just to take it slow and go with flow. Plus I figure even if I felt better, I would still run with Drew and not push it by myself. Mile 1 was good, a little slower than my last few runs, but not by much. That was a good sign that I hadn't lost much running conditioning. The most boring part of the run are the first and last 2 miles since its along the LA river bike path. Just not eye appealing. But after that it gets more motivating. We hit mile 3 at around 32+ which wasn't too bad. I knew I was getting stronger as we ran. We stopped for water and were off again at around 3 1/4 mile. At 3 1/2 I felt great but then backed off and had Drew lead since I wasn't sure which way to go. We hit the halfway point (4 1/2) and I was feeling great. We each had a goo and some water. I had a cherry one and it tasted like sugar coated jam. Ugh. So off we went. I think we hit the 4 1/2 mark at around 47 minutes. The way back I felt great and when we hit the wood part I took the lead. I knew we would stop again at the water fountain and just enjoyed the rush of my run. At mile 7, Drew's knee began to bother him and he told me to just keep going. I was feeling great so I put it in a higher gear. Nothing crazy, but a tad more of a push. As always the last mile was the worst, only because mentally you know you only have around 10 minutes to go. I need to figure out a way to not think that way and I will be good. So I was really shocked when I crossed the 9 mile mark at 1 HR, 32 Min 45 Sec. Including the 3 stops we had, that puts me averaging about 10:20 / mile. Then if I wanted to see what it would be had I not taken those stops for Drew's water, it would probably push me closer to 10:12. Not too shabby!.

Side note - today is now Monday and my legs/thighs/etc are sore!!! OUCH. My knee was hurting me last night, but that is fine now.

Weight 183. (Drew says that we are at the mile marks now where we should begin to see weight loss..let's hope so!!).