Mississippi 10 Mile

Well, as predicted, this was a bit of a challenge for me. Seeing as how my weekly distance has been about 10 miles, I just decided this week, I'd put it all in one day. Whew! This is actually a pretty nice little race. The price is right - $8-$10 w/o T-shirt I think. It's out and back along the Mississippi River path. It was a perfect morning, and the path was shaded enough to keep you from overheating in the sun. All in all, I recommend it. If your looking for the thrill of victory and all the glory of medals and crowd rah-rahs, this is not your race. But if you want to get out there in more of a low key setting, maybe a training race, this is great. I'm for it.

That being said, a mile 5 I was keeping pace with the back of the pack. I did a run 5, walk 1 through the first half. I kept thinking that if I felt good, I would pick it up to at least 10 minutes of running on the way back. What was really interesting to me is that I wasn't even winded by mile 3. I felt like I was doing the run/walk intervals more for my poor legs that didn't know what was in store for them yet. I can only credit the swimming I have been doing for my easy breathing during this run. Swimming must be helping with the cardio side of running.

So I stayed the course even though it is SUPER-D-DUPER painful to not want to keep up with the cool crowd. It was me and 5 other people bringing up the rear for the first half. I did feel ok, so I started running for at least 10 minute intervals and was able to improve my position a little. Mostly I felt good because I didn't go out to strong and I still had fuel at the end. And at the end I mean until about mile 8.72 I had fuel. Then I was not a happy camper. I had to lie to my legs and tell them we were almost done. Yeah. Right. Almost is .10 of a mile. not 1.10 miles. They felt betrayed, but luckily they didn't walk out on me.

In the end, I am so glad that I have that behind me as a milestone. My legs are pretty sore, but they'll recover. It more of a mental thing to know that I did 10 and that building up the miles is within reach again. I'm doing a cutback week next weekend, and then ramping up for Grandma's Half. And I am vowing that I am going to follow my training plan that I came up with to the letter. No more, 10 mile weekly totals. I need about 16+ miles per week. I don't want to have to have a painful 1/2.