Sunday, September 13, 2009

First Long Run

Yesterday was my first long run. Fortunately the weather was a cool 90 degrees and muggy. At least it was a bit cloudy and we ran on the bike path in Lower Bidwell Park. It really was a lovely run next to a stream. There were some other people but not too many and not all that many other dogs which is good because Rusty our Mini Pincher behaves very poorly in social situations and would freak out if he saw too many other dogs.

The run was 6 miles and I ran at a pace of about 5.25 MPH which is a bit slower that I would have liked but the point of this run was to make the distance and be at a conversation pace which is what we were at. I did give a good kick on the last half mile in order to help my mental endurance. It is at this point that I would like to give a shout out to Body Glide, one of the best products ever created. I have used it backpacking, doing triathlons, and long distance running. I put it on all over. If I could get a bath tub full of the stuff and just dunk myself I would. It keeps you from chaffing. Having used said body glide i didn't chaff even though this was the longest run I have had in a long time. At some point i'll have to do a post about the gear that I use.

As far as how I felt during the run I felt great during the whole run. Nothing hurt, I wasn't too tired, and I probably could have kept going for longer if I needed to which is good because i'm going to have to next week. The first two miles went by really quickly, probably because I was talking about fixing up classic cars. Then the next mile seemed to go on forever but eventually it was done and we turned back around which is exciting because even though Chico is relatively flat, there is a river running through the park and the direction it is flowing is a little bit downhill, so the way up was upstream going uphill-ish and the way back, at least in my mind was downhill. So back we went and going back felt like it went a lot faster, probably because I had landmarks to guage how far we had gone. Rusty kept up very well at this pace until about the last mile he started to slow down. My wife has a basket on her bike so if we need to we can throw him in.

Good run, i'm a bit sore today but very proud of myself.

No comments:

Post a Comment