I made it!

I was pretty happy with my run on Thursday. First off, I didn't die (as previously speculated), but my joints ached a little bit towards the end. I am attributing that (the aching) to the fact that I've never ran that far with no stopping before. It was an 8-miler, at about 5:30 pm, sunny and 85F outside. Not ideal running conditions by any means, but not completely unbearable either. I made it through the 8 miles without stopping, which in itself is encouraging.

I don't think I've ever ran 8 consecutive miles before. Back in High School I didn't really keep track of my long runs. I would just run with everyone else, for about 45-60 minutes and come back for the speed portion of the workout. For the entire workout, I am sure there were days where we'd run 12-15 miles in a day. I can not recall running 8 consecutive miles however. So long story short, once a week I will be completing 'My longest run ever' as the long runs go up between now and October. That's kinda nice.

About my pace. Yesterday, I was again at 8:45/mile pace. On any run over 5 miles, my pace has been a pretty consistent 8:45/mile. Lately on my shorter runs (less than 4 miles) I've been hitting between 7:30-8:00 miles. In my head this sounds like a good pace for me at both the longer and shorter distances. I am shooting for sub-4 hours on this Marathon in October.

If there is anyone out there in 'the blogosphere' (lol) that has any pacing advice/experience, I'm all ears.

Music: Yesterday with my 8 mile run, I listened to a lot of music. I listened to a bunch of Detroit Local Stuff (including my own band....I know, totally lame, right??) that nobody would have heard of, but I also listened to my favorite band of all time, The Hives. They are cool guys, and I really like their music.

PS: The picture above is just the first thing that comes up when you put 'happy runner' into Google Image Search