We always had a lot of fun using walkie-talkies on family road trips. My dad and his brother would converse back and forth something like:
"Breaker, breaker. Come in. Do you copy? Over."
"Ren-10-10. Forty-NINER. Copies. Over."
"We're going to get off at Exit 249er for a pit stop."
"Roger. Over and out."
I'm not sure that they ever had a "normal conversation" on those things. That wouldn't have been any fun right?
I blame my fam, but walkie-talkie or not I never miss an opportunity to casually throw "Niners" into conversation. Tonight I completed a run of that length in 1:32:53.
(I caved and bought Marathon by Hal Higdon.) In the book, Hal talks about starting slow and having more energy conserved for the end. Tonight, I decided this sounded like a universal principal. Instead of setting the treadmill at 5.8 to start, I set it at 5.7. I knew at a 10:30 min/mi pace I wouldn't burn out and could finally take it farther with the treadmill than I have in a while. I pretty much maintained this pace until the last half mile. (Once I'm comfortable with 10+ miles again, I'll start playing around with when to gradually start picking up my pace. There's got to be a better way than a drastic burst of speed the last half mile.)
I've also decided I may not believe in 8 mile runs (when training for a half). I think I've only been on one in my life. EVER. For some reason this distance is annoying to me. If I'm going to run that far, I might as well run 9 or 10 miles. My long runs the past 3 weeks have been: 7 miles, 6.25 miles, and the Niner.
In the past 7 days I ran:
5 miles
5 miles
3 miles
2.5 miles
9 miles
It was a good week! It's also worth noting that something that was stressing me out for the past couple months isn't anymore. Without added worries, I seem to be better able to focus on the task at hand. And knowing that I'm back to a distance of 9 miles is a huge stress relief in itself. I celebrated with a Yuengling. I have to train for the post-race festivities too right? ;-)
