I can (still) run 10 miles

The Gate City Marathon was a month ago and since then I haven't run any long distance runs. I've been mostly focusing speed.

Sunday morning I made plans with a friend to attempt 10 miles. He's training for Ghost Train, an ultra marathon so all miles are good. I honestly was not sure how it would go or if I would be successful but I also knew he would make sure I was successful even if I had to walk the last 2 miles.

I have stopped with my pre-run snack since the last time I had it, my digestive system revolted sending me on a dash to the port-o-potties. No thank you, I'd like to avoid that again. I don't know if it was my pre-run snack or the volume of junk food I ate the night before but either way it's made me scared of food. I need to try my pre-run snack again, but when I'm running at home and have easy quick access to a clean bathroom.

The Epic hills were between 3 & 4.

Due to this, while I was awake an hour before we were to meet, I had only consumed 2 glasses of water. As we started out, I was already hungry. Thankfully we started with more walking than usual, which was a nice warm up.  Quickly once we started running legs were sore, so I took one of my electrolyte pills, and continued on. Sore legs early into running is a new thing to me, but I have been pushing speed. Plus last week, I donated blood on Monday, ran track workout on Wednesday evening, ran at 5am Thursday morning and went to a baseball game that evening which resulting in many flights of stadium stairs, then Friday morning I ran at 5am again. I did rest on Saturday, if hardcore house cleaning counts as rest. I likely didn't help myself out by having some scotch Saturday night, but it was really good.

Eventually on the run I started snacking on my clif bloks, while I had a few gus with me, I just wasn't feeling like I wanted that much nutrition at once.

My friend had a plan to run out to Browning Rd and then back. Browning is a well know hill here in Nashua. Local runners training for the Mt Washington race will go there to do hill repeats.If I recall Browning is a half mile long hill. My mini van complains when I've driven up it. After that we wandered through a few more streets, found more hills and I introduced my friend to an amusing intersection here in Nashua that I can only guess was done to slow down drivers and prevent accidents. The goal of this run was not rolling hills, but that is what happened. My friend told me about the new Chelmsford Rail trail and how flat it is. If I had access to a teleporter, I would have requested a transfer, I was super done with hills after 5 miles. I just looked at them and declared We're walking the hill. My friend didn't seem to mind. When we were not walking I think we were going a 10 -10:30 pace which is a faster run pace for intervals than my interval run pace before the marathon.

It got humid out, so a little after halfway I opted to join the Sports Bra Squad and remove my shirt. The rest of the run was a lot more comfortable, plus I was starting to run out of water and hoping cooling off would minimize sweating. As we were getting close to the parking lot, we were both starving, but my friend insisted we loop the parking lot so that my watch registered all 10 miles.

In the end with all the walking my pace averaged out to 13:41, with my fasted split being 11:55 and slowest 16:10(which was the monster hill). I'm happy with this. Now I know I can run 10 miles still. Marathon training starts in July.