The First Ten Miles

I had my first long run on Saturday (March 17). While the rest of the world was snuggled away in their warm cozy beds I managed to drag myself away and drove out to Half Moon Bay at 7:00 in the morning. I was thanking my lucky stars driving over there that I'm part of the "fast" group. We didn't have to arrive until 7:45. The other groups arrived at 7:00 and 7:30. That extra half hour of sleep makes a difference that early in the morning.

I always manage to wear the wrong clothes on the days we have the group runs. Usually I overdress. It's warm and sunny outside and I show up in pants and a long sleeved shirt. This time I underdressed, or so I thought. The warm weather we'd been having falsely lead me to believe that it would be a bright sunny day and that shorts were the way to go. Fortunately I was smart enough to wear a long sleeved shirt and bring my jacket with me. When I pulled into the parking lot it was 50 degrees and overcast. Not exactly ideal conditions for wearing shorts.

There were just a handful of us running in the final group. Our mission was to run between 6-10 miles. We all chose to go for the full 10. We started out together, but John and Dean took off right away. We didn't see them again until they had turned around to head back to the parking lot. Eventually the rest of us split up and ran at different paces. I found a new running partner for the day - Bryan. He was pretty much the same pace as me, maybe a little faster, but I liked the challenge.

The trail was beautiful. We were able to take in all of the sights and sounds of the ocean as we ran parallel with the water. We kept up a good pace and only had to stop twice - once for the bathroom (which was surprisingly clean!) and once at the 5 mile marker to stretch and eat some GU. Remind me never to do that again! I don't know if I ingested too much at once or if it really is that disgusting. Either way I didn't enjoy it. Next time I'm going for the Jelly Belly power beans.

I'm proud to say that I set a new personal record (and secretly reveled in the glory of passing lots of people from the previous two groups who started out way earlier than us). Our time for the run (including the stops) was 1 hour 26 minutes. Woo hoo! What a great confidence booster! The best thing is that I wasn't tired after the run. I managed to go to Napa and attended a crab feed and didn't even feel the fatigue of running 10 miles. I'm really starting to like this running thing!