Since I didn’t do my longer run yesterday…it needed to get done this morning. After walking almost 2.0 miles with Bennie, I headed up to Waterville to get it done. The only thing was which course to use?

I parked at the Hannaford parking lot and figured I would go through Winslow and come back through the 2 Cent bridge. I really thought that 8.0 or so would about right, well at least that was the plan when I left the truck.

The temps were in the low 70’s, low humidity and partly sunny, not a bad day to run.

Once I got going, everything kind of fell into place, I couldn’t find my Garmin before I left the house so I just used the Timex, so I know how much time it took me to run the course, but the mileage is more of a guesstimate than accurate down to the nearest hundredth. ;-). I did take .36 off the final total because I went along the Benton Trail versus the road.

Close enough.

I did find that I was more willing to stop for a moment to take pictures than I do when I am running with a GPS device going and the other thing was that I naturally sped up on the downhills and flats and didn’t worry so much about the bumps I encountered along the way.

Looking out over the Kennebec up towards Winslow, I love this photo.

The old Fort in Winslow, where I stopped for a blue box break. The Benton trail, I always like running here, there is just something peaceful about running along the river.

If you look real close you can see Lawrence Junior High – where I taught for a couple of years. Running by here did bring back a couple of good and bad memories.

I am not going to say the run was easy, because the last couple of miles were tough, but it felt as though most of the run was sub 9:00 minute pace. It felt like one of my old school run and it was the first time I have done a longer run in quite a while that I haven’t used a GPS device.

While I did wonder about how many miles I had run and how many I was going to end up with, I wasn’t concerned about how fast I was going, other than I was feeling good and running well.

I will run this course again someday with the GPS watch on just to get a better idea of how far it really is, but for now 12.1 miles for the day is close enough.

Methinks that next week, the longer run will be capped at something a bit shorter, running 13 and 12 milers on consecutive weeks at this point in my training is tough on the old body. When I got home, Mary had gone shopping, so I ate a quick lunch and took an hour nap – it felt pretty good I gotta admit.