First Feel of Sunshine...

After an extremely fun day/evening of a Bruins win, reconnecting with old friends, meeting new friends, and great times... I woke up with the mindset that I needed to get my distance run in. It's really come down to a state of mind for me. I can't say I ever pictured myself waking up on a weekend and thinking to myself... okay I need 3 hours to get my run in... not once would I have ever thought that. [not to mention this training has become much more of a time commitment than I ever thought it would be, but I know it will be worth it].  But I come to look forward to my long runs.  People always comment about my long runs stating they think they would get bored or simply couldn't do it.  I think they'd actually surprise themselves. I find I'm able to go into the depths of my mind... analyze everything that is going on in my life... and return to the scenery around me without much more than a few blinks of my eyes.

Heading out for my run, I wasn't sure how my body was going to handle it... but I knew it HAD to be done... there wasn't really much of a question, just more so a curiousness to how it would go, but the sun was shining and it felt nice to not be super bundled up.

I tried to tell myself to slow my pace down to be able to withstand the running parts longer... but of course I ended up running some of my faster splits for longer runs... my first three miles were all under 10 minutes... my third mile even being 9:14.... alright SLOW down Stephanie.. you have 13 more miles to go.

I headed down my normal route towards Summer Street and down to Atlantic Avenue... from there I decided that today I would run along the Charles until I hit my half way point and then I would turn around.

I did love seeing the sailboats out along the river...

Even though it doesn't look it the sun was shining..

After the first few miles I could definitely feel my knee start to bug me a little, but I did as everyone keeps telling me and let my mind take over my body... I'm telling you... it's ALL a state of mind [remind me that on Marathon day please spectators] This is when I escape into my mind and think about everything BUT my knees hurting.  This works most of the time, but there are times I had to stop and stretch out my legs in hopes to try and alleviate the pain.

Throughout the run, I didn't think it was going as well as my prior weekends 16 miler... and I was even more parched than I thought I would be... I felt like survivor trying to ration out my two little water bottles throughout the whole run. 

[hello Boston Parks & Recreation... we're all out here running, can we turn on the water fountains along the river now please?]

When I finally was counting down my last couple miles, I was happy to see that I had actually cut my time down by 2 minutes... but boy... did my knees hurt by the time I got out of the shower and sat down on the couch. Definitely going to take a rest day tomorrow.

Tomorrow's Distance: Rest Day

Tuesday's Distance: [in question due to knee pain, and the feeling of some muscle in my left knee feeling on the verge of being strained or pulled]