Road to Boston

Today was a hilly (rolling) 8 miles that I ran at an average pace of 9:21.  I wouldn't say I felt on top of the world or anything, but I do feel that I'm acclimating to the greater mileage and feeling like 8 miles really isn't so hard anymore.  

My quandry is whether I should move to 9 miles per day next week.  I feel ready, but I'm out of town on "vacation".  If you call a vacation taking my son to play baseball for a week . . .lol.  I am concerned about where I will run and when I will squeeze it in.  The long run will be 17 miles. Yikes!  For some reason, running long on my home turf doesn't scare me, but away from home kinda does.  Even though I guess technically I could come up with a loop and do repeats.  

Sigh.  My gut feeling is to stick with the 8's and make sure I get my long run in, and then move up to 9 miles per day the following week. 

Today was awesome.  I did a combo road/trail run, and the first 2 miles are downhill followed by 4 flat trail miles and then 2 miles of mostly gradual climb.  I felt awesome.  It's definitely my favorite 8 mile run (I have quite a few different ones!) just because it feels so easy, and it is pretty, and it is in nice little 2 mile sections, each of which feels like nothing.

My average pace was 8:46.  Oops.  Too fast.  But I did pick it up more at the end when I still was feeling very good.  Nonetheless, it was too fast.  I better be careful on these next couple of runs so I feel good on the 16 miler on Thursday.  I have a really nice loop all planned out. 

9:13 min/mi average pace.

9:27 min/mi.

A pretty hilly long run!  9:39 min/mi.