Managed to crawl out of bed just after 6 a.m. and got myself ready to take on the road. I was more than a little hesitant when I looked at the weather, only to find that the humidity had actually reached 100%! I don’t think I’ve seen that since I was in Po’hang, South Korea back in the 1990’s. Needless to say it felt oppressive when I left the comfort of the air conditioned house. Got the music and iMapMyRun app going on the iPhone and took off and a pretty slow pace. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go too fast because of the humidity and the fact that I have decided to break out the Camel Back hydration system again (the shoulder/chest straps constrict my breathing). This run would be the longest since running the Flying Pig half marathon in May, short of that run by 4 miles.
After getting into a decent rhythm I settled down and kept a nice 9:40 - 9:50 pace for most of the nine miles, taking short walk/water breaks about every 2 miles after the first four. I would occasionally pick up the pace a bit, but not so much as to make breathing any more difficult. I knew I would be pretty close to the 9 mile mark when I got home when I hit mile 8, but I didn’t know if I would have to make up any distance after I hit the driveway. I pulled the armpocket off about two houses before mine only to find that I was at 8.99 miles, and so I walked the last 0.01. I was pretty happy to have gotten in all of the mileage in one giant loop, starting and stopping at the end of the driveway.
The 1 hour, 29 minute run took me west of Bethel, down Burke & Macedonia roads, back into town where I went around most of the walking track, over to the cemetery and back towards the house. Overall I had a 9:53/mile pace and felt tired, but not exhausted when I was done. Glad to have gotten in a long run.
July, August & September are looking to be big mileage months, and all told through the Chicago Marathon I will have run roughly 400 miles from July through October 10th (which is more than the distance from my house to Chicago).
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