At the Beach

We arrived on the Outer Banks of North Carolina yesterday afternoon for our spring beach trip. It's always a long drive, but for some reason this one left me especially tired. Factor in some fierce wind making all kinds of racket throughout the night and causing me to lose sleep, and this morning's long run was looking like a potential disaster. Regardless, I got up around 7:30AM, drank some coffee, and set off to run from the house where we're staying in Avon to a place we sometimes fish at in Frisco, a route I figured was somewhere just short of 13 miles (I was wrong because it wound up being 14).

I felt pretty good from the start and by the second mile I was already hitting a decent pace. From there it basically turned into a progression run. If I hadn't had my Garmin on to give me the splits, I wouldn't have believed I was running anywhere near as fast as I was because it felt very smooth and under control (splits are pasted below). I guess that's what flat terrain and a little bit of a tailwind will do for you. This was one of those days where the old me would have probably added at least another 15 min due to how good I was feeling, but I'm committed to sticking to the plan and actually wound up a bit over anyway thanks to underestimating the distance of the route. In any event, it was a great way to cap off my second solid week of training in a row. This was good evidence that things are starting to come around. I just have to be patient, stack lots of weeks like the past two on top each other, and let the training do its job.

As a side note, I really need to seriously consider coming down here in the fall and running either the OBX Marathon or Half Marathon. Today's long run was just like the 18 miler I did this past fall, a lot faster than my normal long runs at home but at the same time relatively easy. On the right weather day, fully fit and rested, you could really roll a race here.