Long Run in New City

Today's long run was almost delayed until tomorrow which means it probably wouldn't have happened. Thank you Jason for getting me back on track!!!

By the time I headed out the door for my run it was almost noon. I talked Jason into letting me turn today's run into a short 3-5 miler and letting me run my long run tomorrow before we leave for New York, if and only if I promised to get up extra early and head out right away (which I admit to having a serious problem doing).

I headed out for a short run but got about 2 miles into it and realized I really could do my long run today. I pulled out my phone to call Jason to let him in on my plan only to discover that there was only one bar of battery left on it. I'm smart enough to realize that I didn't want to run in a very new and strange city without adequate cell phone availability so back to my original plan it was. When I got back to the house and told Jason that I almost ran the long run today and why I decided not to he literally pushed me out the door with his fully charged cell phone. So away I went.

Running in Pittsburgh ... oh my goodness the HILLS!!! Up, down ... Up, down ... Up, down, that's all I did today for over three hours. I saw alot of runners out there today and I had lessons to learn from them. At first I would huff and puff my way running up each of these hills, proud of myself for running while that runner was walking. After I noticed that this was definitely a pattern I realized how smart they were and I started walking right along with them. Keep in mind these are not your average every once in awhile hill, but STEEP come at you nonstop hills.

I did find a nice trail to run on. I probably could have run the whole run on this trail, going up and down over and over again. But it's hard running on a trail that you don't know how long it is ... or where it ends ... or how in the world you will get home ... or if you can find your way home ... or if you can't find your way home if the folks at home could even find you to pick you up. All in all ... it was a very unsettling kind of run today.

I ran for 3 1/2 hours today and only logged 13.56 miles. I have been told and have read that training runs should not exceed 3 1/2 hours and I was more then happy to quit when I was supposed to today. I'm hoping that the hills were enough to make up the extra 4.5 miles that I didn't get in today's run ...

Running Stats

Running Time: 3:29:35
Running Distance: 13.56 mi
Average Pace: 15:28/mi

On the shoe front ... my feet hurt and I'm pretty sure that it's the new shoes. My achilles tendon that was hurting in my old shoe was hurting today along with the other side where the tongue of the shoe hits. And the bottoms of both feet are pretty sore ... a new sore that I haven't dealt with before. I spent quite a bit of time (with timer turned off of course) readjusting my shoes trying to get my feet to stop hurting. I think I'm gonna wait until Tuesday to run again and try running with my old shoes again.