I have been a day late and dollar short the past few days, so please bear with me, while I get my shit back together. 😉

Yesterday, with the wonderful weather outside and looking at the weather forecast, there wasn’t any doubt about where I was going to do my planned 10.0 mile long run – on Planet Fitness’ treadmill.

Once I got that figured out, it just became a question of running in place for an hour and a half. Not the easiest thing to do, especially when you know the roads are getting worse the longer you stay on the ‘mill.

Per the plan I started out at 6.6 mph (approx a 9:06 pace) and held that pace through 5.0 miles without any strain, other than that wonderful feeling of holding back bowel progress. At that point I kicked it up to 6.7 mph just to get to 6.0 miles quicker. Coming back to the treadmill with only 4.0 miles left after a bathroom break is easier mentally than coming back and still having 5.0 miles to go.

After stopping for that mad dash to the locker room, I got back on and kept it at 6.7 mph for the next mile. Once I lost weight, I felt really good and got this crazy thought in my head about just doing the 13.1 miles. I figured that if I felt great at 10.0 I could keep going.

However, along the way, I kept increasing the speed every so often and I had been playing with the incline just to avoid the boredom factor. By the time I got to 9.0 miles I was down around an 8:20 pace and feeling good. So I kept playing with the speed, but at about 9.5 miles, I decided that even though I was feeling really good, that because I have been feeling very fatigued coming into the run that I needed to be smahter than usual and just stick to the plan.

Which meant stopping at 10.0 miles.

The last quarter-mile was at race pace and I still felt very strong. So I will give this a really good rating of 3 on my 4 point scale. The good thing is, even as fatigued as I have felt lately there is not any doubt in my mind that I if I had chosen to that I would have finished off a 13.1 mile run. The confidence is coming and that is a good thing. I know that I can run 13.1, now to do it a few times and then it becomes a question of how fast can I run 13.1, not if.

I know that I have to work on this stopping during the run to use the bathroom every time I run, but I have a feeling that is related to my dietary choices over the last month and I am working on improving that. Although it is hard when the people that prepare the meals most of the time are not thinking along the same lines or direction that I want to be heading.

However, I am in charge of what goes down the pie-hole, so I cannot blame anyone but myself about what I eat. Although it does hurt other’s feelings a little when they prepare stuff “just for you” and you don’t eat it. Sometimes it is easier to go along with the flow and keep smiling.

Good run and I was glad that I had the milestone pod on my shoes, since I forgot my Garmin – it was sitting on the table charging when I walked out the door. However, I do keep my old Times Ironman in my gym bag just for that eventuality and simply put that on to track the time. The Milestone pod continued to let me know I was a heel-striker and that I don’t lift my legs up enough, but gave me some info on the pace that I like to review.