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Energy up!
Legs felt a little heavy but turnover was okay.
Blew a few very satisfying snot rockets. Running nose made catching my breath a little difficult, but nothing too bad.
Totally forgot about my aching heart.

Love running in sunny 40's, perfect weather. Took about 2 and a half miles for my hands to get warm, an another mile or so for the sweat to start flowing... Was running a new transition between to other legs that I've done a few times, thought I had looked closely enough at the map to know my turns but leave it to State College to have a missing road sign or two to throw things off. Got to my 4 mile marker and knew I needed to turn right on Sparks within .1 or .2 miles. I pass a road that looks promising but is unmarked so continue to the next road marked Gill -- can't remember from the map whether this is the road before the turn or the road that was supposed to tell me to I had gone too far. Decided to take it and then realized that I had no way of knowing which way to turn to get off of Gill which I didn't think went all the way back down to Westerly. Intuition kicked in and told me to cut through an alley back to that unmarked road and follow it. After a few blocks I at least knew I was converging on Westerly, even if I might hit a deadend and have to circle around a bit. But then, this cute little park emerged which I knew flanked my desired road-- and there I was a steep descent and Westerly appeared. Hit my lap button at the pre-determined marker for mile 5...turns out the mile was about 1.19 with the little detour. Ran pleasantly along Westerly toward Pugh and then uh-oh the hill on Pugh is serious; I couldn't even see the top. Trudged up and then thought my lungs might explode for a descent. Stopped to clutch my knees and take an FRS chew for about 30 seconds and then pressed on. This time I forgot where my mile 6 marker was an opted to wait for my lap with 1 mile left. For the first weeks of training I avoided Waupelani at the end of runs - .6miles straight up hill on tired legs is not fun. Today was not fun either. Told myself all I need was to stay under 10 minutes for that last mile, with the hill and I'd be under an hour for my run. Push push push and then home! More clutching of the knees and then James came outside (also just back from his run) and we stretched and shared details of our runs. Here are my specs:

(8:02)
(7:58)
(8:01)
(7:31)
9:18 / 1.19mi  (7:49)
9:09 / 1.10    (8:19)
8:57 / 1.02    (8:47)

58:56 / 7.31mi  (8:04)

Feel pretty good about this run. Still haven't run a whole hour, but given that I averaged more than 7mph, I'm happy with that as a "long" run for a half-marathon relay training program. Despite the stretching, legs feel tight right now -- probably one of the bigger disadvantages of running in the cool temps. Think I would have been too warm in tights.


pre-post experiment = successful.

(james also rocked his run -  over 8 miles, under 1 hour...3 weeks til race day!)