Let me start off by saying that I know that I still owe you all a better description of my last long run. And that I should blog more than twice a week. But, well, a lot of stuff has been going on over here, and the fact of the matter is that…

Well…

I hadn’t run since Saturday.

There - I admitted it. Anyway, today I promised myself that no matter what I was going to find the time to do at least seven miles.

It turns out that I ran in the evening. The late evening. Oh, okay, about 9:30pm. Right after a cold front blew in. When I got to the trail it had just started to rain with cold, big, wet drops. A part of me wanted to say, “Oh, just run tomorrow morning.” But that wouldn’t cut it, not another time. I’d promised myself a run, so a run I was going to have.

It was wonderful.

First of all, this was the only time I have ever been down on the trail and not seen a single other person. I did seven miles, entirely by myself. The rain sprinkled for the first five minutes and then let up, and the cloud cover and frequent cloud-to-cloud lightning meant that the whole run was faintly lit, quite beautifully so. It was cool and crisp for the most part without being cold.

I just wanted to get some easy miles in, so I ran without my watch. Naturally, I posted what would have been my fastest time ever for this stretch. Just running moderately, I started with a 4/4 breathing pattern for two miles and then upped the ante to a very comfortable 3/3 (about as fast as a really hard 4/4). I’m guessing it was about an 8:30 pace for the most part. It felt amazing. When I got to about the five mile mark I picked up the pace somewhat, and with a half mile to go I reached down and finished out at around a 7:00.

Not knowing my time is a little frustrating but, hey, that’s the tradeoff to running without the electronics. All I know is that it took me an hour from the time I got out of my car (futzing around, shaking out, walking to the trail, etc) to the time that I got back into my car (grabbing a drink, doing a little stretching, getting my cel out of the trunk, etc). Even at 58:00 of running, that’s an 8:20 pace - and I’m pretty sure it was less than that. I guess I’ll never know for sure :-)

This is the way that running is supposed to be. Calm and peaceful. Sure, it was a workout, but I was able to keep my mind on other things and just let my body do what it wanted to do, which was move. Everything came together nicely: I coasted along the straights and powered up the hills like clockwork. Good clockwork, too, none of this cheap “roleks” clockwork.

This Sunday I have a 30k race. I want to get two more quality runs in between now and then. If I run tomorrow, I want to do some form of speed/hill workout. Those are my only goals right now - I’m trying to keep them realistic. Come the weekend, I just want to go fast and have fun doing so.

And yes, I’ll get to that long run recap real soon now. Seriously.

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