8 mile run

I did my first 8-mile run yesterday. 8.2 miles, to be exact. I did it in 1 hr. 21 min.; averaged 9:53 miles; and burned 930 calories. I was pretty happy, even though I wished I'd started earlier, because it was a bit warm out - especially in the sun.

I set out just to run 8 miles today. I started by walking the first 4 minutes (which I usually do). I wasn't concerned about time, but just distance. But pretty soon I noticed I was near the 10-minute mile pace, so I shot for averaging 10-minute miles over 8 miles. I actually got faster around the 5, 6, and 7 mile markers. However, as I ran up the hill along Lower Huntington towards home it got hotter and hotter, and I slowed a bit. So I stopped when I got to 8.2 miles, and just did a walk around the loop inside the addition. I felt pretty good afterward though.

My course was: I ran from home down to the Rivergreenway and went to my turnaround behind Safety Town (2.5 miles), then ran back on the Rivergreenway and followed it up to the 2.5-mile turnaround at the baseball diamonds at Foster Park, then I ran back home. It was exactly 8 miles to the entrance to Lake Shores along Lower Huntington. Then I walked not quite a mile after that around the outside.

I can't decide now if I want to just keep running for therapy, or if I want to actually start training. If I start training I will probably want to run shorter distances on most days, but run faster... And only run longer distances maybe on Monday and Friday (with the longest on Friday). Otherwise, I may just keep running the 4-6 mile distances every day, and just do long runs on Fridays. I'd like to try to add a mile every Friday, but I don't know if that's possible. Maybe every other Friday... working my way up to 13 miles into September.

We'll see. For now, I'm just glad I did 8 miles. That's the longest I've ever run to my knowledge. Probably by far. The furthest I've ever remembered was 6.5 miles just a few weeks ago.