The end of one year... the beginning of another

I ended 2009 by running a total* of 1017 miles.    I ended December with a record month of 153 miles.  I am pretty happy about my December results considering how crazy life gets in December.  It was a pretty stressful month and focusing on running helped keep me balanced.

I ran a great run on December 31.  I had a six mile tempo run on the schedule (a mile warm up, four miles at half marathon pace, a mile cool down).  I started out a different direction than usual instead of doing a straight out and back, in order to mix it up a bit.  I ran a loop and then headed down to the river.  After a mile warm up, I went into my "tempo" miles.  My optimistic half marathon pace is 8:30.  I'm not sure if I can run that fast for 13.1 miles, but that is how I am training.  That first mile was an effort (8:28).  I was able to get into a bit of a groove on the second mile (8:23).  The next two were 8:24 and 8:26.  As I was running along the river, I was trying to figure out how far out I needed to run before turning back.  I can never seem to do math when I am running, especially early in the morning when I am tired.  During the last tempo mile, I realized that I miscalculated my distance.  I was more than three miles from home and I needed to get back in time for my husband to go to work.  Instead of slowing down, I sped up (8:12).  The seventh mile was 8:55 (it is uphill).  By the time I got close to home, I knew I would make it in time and did the last 3/4 mile at a 9:53 pace.  My 6 mile run turned into 7.76 and it was a great way to end the year.

Today I ran for the first time in the new year, after a very relaxing day yesterday.**  I am planning on running a half marathon next Saturday, so I wanted to do my long run today.  I also wanted to run with my friend, Kelly.  She wanted to run between 12 and 14 miles.  We ended up running 12.5 miles together (she could have gone further, but that is the distance when we got back to our cars).  I headed back out through the neighborhoods and ran another 7.6 miles.  I felt pretty good.  My feet really started to hurt around mile 18.  However, I was able to push myself to run the 18th mile under 9 minutes (8:51)!!    I got back to my car a little before my mileage goal, so I ran around the parking lot of the school where I was parked until I reached this distance:

 Happy New Year!!!!

I averaged 10:25 for all twenty miles.  I thought that was pretty good, considering that a good chunk of our run was in Santiago Creek with steep hills and uneven terrain.  All in all, it was a great start to the year.

Stay tuned for a 2009 recap, as well as a post looking forward into 2010.

Happy Running.

*This could be higher, since I did not log every run and had to get information from several sources.  I ran at least 1017 miles.  :-)
**Relaxing except for the very frustrating Rose Bowl where my Ducks' defense forgot to show up.