16 miles at 6 am

Ah, Saturday...a glorious day for sleeping in.  Not so for the runners of the world.  Honestly, why runners feel the need to get up at the crack of dawn, even on the weekends, to run is beyond me.  But if you want to run with other runners, then you'd better get your a$$ out of bed!

Saturday morning I met a small group of people for a long run.  We met at 6 am and it was not even close to being light outside.  The only good thing about this is that it's a legitimate excuse to geek out in my headlamp.  The four of us ran 6 miles at a decent clip and I was kinda feeling it b/c the humidity was literally 98%.  We circled back to the parking lot after the first 6 and met up with a larger group of runners for the final 10.  As the miles wore on, the group thinned out and some people peeled off as they felt fit (or should I say unfit).  By the final 5 miles or so there were only 4 of us left.  I felt like I was in a pretty elite pack, especially considering one was a former olympic marathon trialist and another was in training for NYC with a seed time of 2 hrs 34 min.  The plan from the get-go was to do a progression run, starting out at around 8 min miles and dropping to 7ish by the end.  We stuck true to plan and finished out the last mile in 7:02.  Average for the entire run was about 7:30. 

Can't remember the last time I ran that far that fast.  Actually I can't remember the last time I ran that far period.  In my previous training my longest long run usually topped out at about 15 miles so it's quite possible that I haven't run 16 miles in one stretch since the last time I was marathon training.  But, it felt good and I feel pretty excited that I have a decent running fitness base right now. 

My current plan is to run a half marathon on Thanksgiving to get a base time and then to start training under a coach for an early season half or full marathon (still haven't decided yet; there are merits to both).  In the meantime, I have been trying to run 5-6 days per week with one long run on the weekends and one speed/tempo day during the weeks.  I'm traveling for the next 10 days so we'll see how well I can keep that up...