Happiness is a Warm Gun...er...Cool Run

Had a great long-ish run this morning. Plan (in case you didn't know, I've been training with my own sketch of a plan which has been 100% flexible based on how I feel) was to run anywhere from 1:40 to 2:00, since I may squeeze in another 1:30 run on Saturday or Monday (again, I haven't made that decision yet).

Aaaaaaaanyway...now that my body is starting to want to sleep more (fuckin' A), which nicely coincides with shorter days, I had to set my fucking alarm clock to make sure I would get up at 5:00AM! I woke up once during the night and lay in bed awake doing some mental scrolling (still working through something --I have some of my best revelations around 3AM), but fell back asleep and had some weird-ass dreams. I can't recall them right now, but they seemed entertaining at the time.

Then I was awakened by the alarm clock. Shit! WAKE THE FUCK UP!!! I initially hit the snooze, but then immediately thought HARDEN THE FUCK UP SHEILA YOU NEED TO BE FINISHED RUNNING BY 8:30. I had slept naked, and there was no good reason for me to put on clothes since I'd be running soon enough. So I ran downstairs to turn on the coffee pot without even putting my glasses on (I'm nearly blind without them but I can still get around), and then I put my running clothes on. Within 5 minutes, I've got coffee and am eating a Power Bar Triple Threat (my usual breakfast). Coffee tastes great. Suck down one cup pretty fast, check weather, only 65, looks great! Manage to get down 2 more cups (visited bathroom 3 times I won't go into details), fuck around online, make Voodoo Mix , it's GO TIME!

Head out the door a little after 6:15, and the weather is beautiful. Still a bit humid, but not bad. The sun isn't up all the way and cars still have headlights on, and so many people are going to work, I spend a lot of time running on the sidewalks, which I don't typically do. I just ran comfortably; although technically I should have inserted some 1/2 marathon pace stuff in there, I just wanted to have a good, consistently paced run.

About 3.25 miles in I was going past a park and the lawn was being mowed, and the guys stopped the mowers so they wouldn't spray me with grass. I always smile at people out working while I'm running, and one of them said, "Nice body" to me as I ran by. I thanked him and smiled. What's not to like about that? I was running uphill at that point, and I just felt weightless. Since there were so many people on their way to work, I had a lot of people looking at me. I felt great, and pretty much smiled the entire way.

I ran all the way to my beloved, now closed, outdoor pool, let out a little sigh, ran past it to go out for :50 (my math skills were fucked up at the time because I definitely wanted to do more than 1:40 total), then flipped it. When I got back to the pool, I stopped there to pee in their nicely mulched yews and then drink some water. I hadn't yet drank any Voodoo even though I was almost 6 miles into the run, since I had had coffee and food, and my stomach just didn't want anything until this point. But I figured it was time to start drinking, so I took a hit of Voodoo and then some water, and blech...the water was lukewarm. So I kept the fountain running, but it never warmed up, so I just sucked it up and drank warm water. Tasty!

I ran back to the Mile 5 mark in about the same time as I had going out, and that section is flat, so it was time to hit the hills again. Some days I just get more motivated to stay on pace with the hills, and today I just felt great, so the first hilly mile back I negative split and thought, huh, I wonder if I can keep doing this? If nothing else, I'm always happy if I don't positive split when I take this route from home, since the hills are worse on the way back. Next mile has some decent climbs, too, and I negative split that one, too, and then the big fucker of a 1-mile long hill, where I had to HTFU again (although I did briefly stop to pet a yellow Lab puppy named Fenway). And I negative split that one, too. The mile after the hill I usually slow down some because I've charged the 1-mile hill. No worries, I'm keeping a decent pace. Last mile home, negative split again!

And then it hits me I've only done 1:40 and feeling really good, so I go in and grab some Gatorade and head back out, deciding I'll do another 15 minutes and call it a day. I took that last 15 minutes fairly easily, and all in all ended up at 12.9 miles in 1:55. Looking back at my long runs over the year, this goes down as one of the best, so I'll take it. Cool weather ROCKS!!! And I feel great--like I coulda run a full marathon today at that pace. Nice!

It was just one of those days where the running felt effortless. I think I'm going to do a 1:30 run on Saturday just to get in a decent run volume for this week, and then I begin "tapering" of sorts for Nothingman.