TWELVE TORTUROUS MILES

How exotic! (not)

It's amazing how quickly your perspective can change. Just a month ago I was in between the Portland and Detroit Marathons and the thought of twelve miles was nothing. What a short little run! During the summer I would have killed to do a twelve miler on the weekends. It would have flown by and felt really short. Well, now that I am out of the marathon mindset (and marathon shape at this point) this run is no longer a gimme!

Luckily Katie wanted to run twelve miles too (we are both getting ready for the Hot Buttered Run Half) so we met up on Saturday morning to get 'er done. Neither of us wanted to do hills, so we settled on Fanno Creek to run the distance. Really, it was an uneventful run. We ran part of the trail the week before on our ten miler, but for the most part it was new (old) territory. It was nice and flat but it was really windy. Parts of the run I wouldn't be surprised if we were running into a headwind of 20mph.

Anyways, long story short, the run felt way longer than it should have and was harder than I would have liked. All told it was 1:50:28 good for 9:12/mile. Not bad when you think of that as a 2:00 half marathon pace. I am a little sore from it and I guess that makes sense... normally my long runs are done a little slower. Still though... I am less than a month removed from a marathon. I guess maybe that's the problem. Maybe two weeks off wasn't enough? Honestly, I'm being dramatic. It wasn't that bad. Just annoying to be outside in the cold and wind for two hours.