Three weeks from today is the TOU!! I can't believe it.
18 was doable but our group kind of traded places today - I had a tough run and Desiree and Jenny both had a really good day. That was good though so that they would decide to sign up for the marathon. We met some nice people on our route today - almost everyone out there seemed to be doing 18 in prep for the fall marathons.
Mandy and Rachel ran with us for a little bit. They are both doing marathons with fall - mandy is doing San Francisco and rachel is doing SGM for the first time. Mandy told us she did SGM last year and ran a 5/1 interval and felt so good and had so much in reserve that she ran the whole last 8 minutes and sprinted at the finish. That was so encouraging to hear and gave us a lot of hope.
The best thing about the run today was that our good friend, Erica, did a SAG for us. She used to run with us but had some previous injuries from a car accident (herniated disk) and then sprained her ankle so she hasn't been able to go. So this morning she started out with us at 5:30 and did aid stations for us about every 1.5 miles for the first half of our run. She had a little table out with water cups and then a little garbage can for our cups. She'd made cute signs to encourage us and played inspiring music from her car. It was a blast to have her out there with us.
I had a tough final 3 miles and really had to slow the pace down and then had to stop for a big bathroom break. Des and Jenny kept going and ended up probably doing 19 miles.
We had another good friend, Julianne, come pick us up. Thank goodness for all the support we get from friends.
Here's out stats:
18 miles / 3:36 / 12:02 avg pace - We felt like we improved a lot over the last long run - faster pace for a lot of the miles. I think that might have something to do with how tough it was at the end for me. | 