Completing My First Marathon....Sort Of

I have completed my first marathon, well sort of. With my 6.45 mile long run yesterday (Sunday) it brought my new running shoes mileage to an even 26.2 miles. I had no idea until I entered my run into my training log. I was surprised to see I had gone that far already in them. During the run I made note of my 10k time since this was the first time I had actually gone that far. It came in at 1:30:10. I was very psyched to see that.

The breakdown on the stationery 10k treadmill run went like this. I set out for the first mile with the intention of it being a warmup mile at 3.5. Five minutes into it I decided to step up the beat and bumped the speed up to 3.9 for the rest of the first mile. At the onset of the second mile I decided to try the "running" on the treadmill and got the speed to 4.5. This only lasted for a tenth of a mile and then I backed it down to 4.0. I remained at 4.0 until mile three where I went up to 4.1 for a half mile before I pulled an Emeril and "kicked it up a notch" to 4.2. I stayed at 4.2 until I had to stop because the treadmill will only run for 60 minutes and then it does a five minute cool down. At the conclusion of the 60 minutes when the cooldown began I cranked the speed and incline back up until I completed the fourth mile and then hit stop. It took about a minute to clear out the info on the first 4 miles and get the belt back up to speed for the remaining 2.2 miles. With that I was on my way at a 4.2 speed. Once I reached the 10k time I hit the "cooldown" and took that for the five minutes it gave me. Not counted in this run is the 1/4 mile walk from condo to the fitness room and the 1/4 mile back. I never count those. On the way back I did not waste the opportunity to high step it for .2 miles, kicking my knees up to my face, having people look at me weird.

In the realm of refueling, as I closed in on the 45 minute mark of my run I downed my third sampling of GU Gel, this time in the flavor of "Espresso Love." It was pretty good. Of the three flavors I have tried now, I would rank them Chocolate Outrage, Espresso Love, and then Strawberry-Banana from best to worst in taste. My sister had mentioned she did not care for the fruit flavored ones, and I would say that if the other fruit flavored ones taste as bad as Strawberry-Banana I want to stay away from them myself. Throughout my entire run, to remain hydrated, I also put away two bottles of Propel, one lemon and one berry.