Believe to Achieve

Oh boy....a 17 miler (turned 18.24) on my own.  But thankfully Mother Nature was looking out for me this morning.  I left my house grudgingly at 8:10am.  The first mile is always the hardest (mentally) for me.  And it is ALWAYS the slowest.  Started out with my almost traditional over 9 mm--  9:17 to be exact.  Oh yah!!  I wore a short sleeve only under my new 8 dollar black fleece.  Well I warmed up too quickly but kept it on until mile four when I got up into Highland.  My arms were a chillin'.  But I felt extremely good.  Just going easy because the plan was to run the last four of the 17 miles under 7mm.   My garmin was giving me grief about running out of live data due to the history getting full and eventually the warnings came more often not just at mile splits.  So....I stopped around mile 7.5 and deleted history as quick as I could so I could start running again.  Boy was that somewhat of a mistake that I did NOT forsee.  After staring at my garmin and flipping thru past workouts and deleting many ones that did not matter (perhaps about 2 to 3 minutes of time I was stopped), when I went to start running my blood had turned to sludge for some reason and I felt crummy.  I have no idea WHY???? this happened.  I was feeling great when I stopped.   I was mesmorized and QUITE irritated at NOW feeling like a slug and I still had over 9 miles to go.   I decided to take my chocolate gu (yes the one I bit the dust with at SGM that has caffeine.  I am trying to get rid of UNwanted GUs with caffeine.  I have two left now).   About a mile later I started to feel dizzy but my legs (or blood) was reviving.  NO water on this run until Alpine ETERNAL WATER FOUNTAIN (mile 12).  I think if I had some water with this Gu I wouldn't have felt so dizzy.  Around mile 10 I was feeling the LOVE again.  I was in Alpine and just had climbed that big hill there.   My music was helping as well.  And the day was just so beautiful.   Knowing water was coming up was also a sweet reward!!  The water was nice and COLD.  Ahhhhh.  It was flowing slowly so I had to take lots of sips to even amount to anything.  I probably only stopped for 60 seconds or less.  I was not really looking forward to FOUR FAST miles coming up in one mile.  Looking ahead I realized this route would actually be 18 miles or so and not 17 but I still decided to start running fast at mile 13 in case I gave up or something and these miles were more honest and not very downhill as mile 18 would be.   The only problem with starting fast at the point I did was the intersection at 4800 north in Alpine/Cedar Hills (about a  mile north of Lone Peak).   I didn't want to stop and it was busy with cars so I improvised and watched the lights closely as I narrowly made it acrosss before the cars could go, slowing only briefly to be a little safe.   I didn't have my garmin in current pace mode so I was guessing I was on track and thankfully I was.  Splits for miles 14-17--  6:47, 6:44, 6:41, 6:36.   Then I knew I was a bit over a mile from my house.  I just slowed my pace and cruised in.  I was surprised that mile 18 was still 7:05!!  Last 0.24 miles-- 7:00.   I feel great.  Stretched and did 50 pushups before showering.  18.24 miles @ 7:50 pace.  Pretty happy with this run.  So VERY close to 3,000 miles.  What to do after I get there?  Got to have some goals.    I was thinking of waiting to run my last few miles to 3,000 at around 11pm tomorrow night (New Year's Eve) to make it more EXCITING  instead of before work.  Anyone want to join me?    I do have family coming over.  Maybe I can get my little sister who is trying to get back into running to get out with me.  I told her I would train her and get her through her next marathon.  She ran SLC in 2006 (I think in 5.5 hours) and has had three more kids since then.  She has 7 kids total.  A set of twins at the end.  Busy woman!!