I Did It! I Finally Did It!!

It’s been literally months in the making, but I finally did it.  That’s right, I switched over to my summer gear and retired the winter clothes for the summer!  A such relief it was to run free and unencumbered.  ha!

Today I ran the long run I was supposed to run last Sunday.  It was my day off and with Mother’s Day this weekend, I wanted to knock it out while I could. 

I did changing things up for the run too.  Typically, when I do interval runs, I run either a 1:30/1:00 or 2:00/1:00 run/walk ratio.  For this run, I wanted to ground-prove a longer ratio, so I went with 5:00/1:30, and it went off quite well.  I’ve been pondering the need for such frequent walking breaks, and have come to the conclusion that it’s not

really necessary to have that much walk time, at least for me.  I’m sure some of my fellow run/walkers will disagree, but hey, go with what works for you right?  I highly doubt I’ll ever return to straight runs for such long distances, but limiting the amount of walk breaks just seems right.  I’ve posted before about how I rarely can hit the “runner’s high” while doing intervals, and that’s something I’ve missed.  Today, I did get there, a few times.  The less frequent breaks also made each one feel more beneficial too.  Increasing it to 1:30 allowed me to catch my breath a little better, and relax a bit better. 

 

I do have to say that the last two miles, it got difficult to hold out the entire 5 minutes, and several of last sets, I had to take a couple of mini walks in the middle of the run interval.  I’ll attribute that to my body not being used to that longer distance, and the fact that I was moving pretty quickly for a long run.  It didn’t feel that way, but the less walking dramatically increased the time. So much so, that my half marathon distance for today was actually 5 minutes faster than my Half Marathon PR!  I was taking it fairly slow too! 

I sure hope that the long run doesn’t re-instigate my gout attack.  I don’t think so, I’m back on the meds and it’s feeling much better but we’ll see.  *fingers crossed, knocking on wood*  Ha!