It was raining heavily in the morning. All this rain has me so depressed that not only didn't I run, I couldn't even bring myself to go to work. I decided to work from home. I came close to just crawling back into bed and sleeping all day. I ended up getting some good work done. About 5:00pm I realized it wasn't raining and thought about going for a run. Our neighborhood 5K Fun Run and Breakfast is Saturday morning, so I decided to do my long run tonight. Wayne's been running in the evenings so I called him. It turns out he had went at 2:00pm and had just finished a 19-miler. I started at the mouth of Provo Canyon at about 5:50pm. As I stopped to adjust my IT band strap shortly into the run, I was nearly run over by another runner who was coming from behind. I ended up running just behind him for the first few miles at just under 9:00 pace. I decided to try to average under 9:00/mi all the way up to Vivian Park, which is a good clip for me. I ended up averaging 8:53/mi for those first 6 miles (8:45, 8:56, 8:59, 8:48, 9:08, 8:45). The next 2 miles up South Fork were much steeper and slower (10:19, 9:28), for an overall average of 9:08/mi going up. I was hoping to go faster coming back down, but when I turned around I felt a strong headwind and it start raining pretty heavily for the next couple of miles. I had taken off my jacket at Vivian Park and tied it around my waist. It didn't take me long to put it back on. My legs felt pretty tired from working on the way up. I decided to just try to keep them turning over for as long as I could. I wasn't really sure I could hold a respectable pace for all 8 miles back. I'm pretty pleased that I did, but I was sure breathing hard those last 3-4 miles. My splits were 8:39, 8:33, 9:01, 8:54, 8:42, 8:45, 8:46, 8:32, for average pace of 8:44/mi. My overall average pace was 8:57/mi. for 16.14 miles. I'm counting all these miles as marathon pace effort. I may have let my focus slip briefly a couple of times, but for the most part I applied marathon pace effort the entire run. I hope by marathon time this same effort yields faster times, and for 10 miles more, but given where I was 6 months ago, I'm very pleased with where I am. | 