67- doubles are for lovers!

15 MILES TODAY OF AMAZING-NESS!!!  Allow me to explain...

I arose early this morning at my parents' house with a long day ahead of me of teaching and driving back to my homeland (aka apartment).  Everything was pretty snow-covered and I knew I was meeting up with my Thursday night run group later, so I took myself up to the gym for a short, but sweet and effective tempo workout.  5 miles total done in under 39 minutes that looked like this:

1 mile wu @ 7.0mph (8:34 pace)
1 mile tempo @ 8.5mph (6:58 pace)
1 mile easy @ 7.1 (8:27 pace)
1/2 mile tempo @ 8.6 (6:53 pace)
1/2 mile easy @ 7.2 (8:20 pace)
1/2 mile tempo @ 8.7 (6:49 pace)
1/2 mile cooldown @ 7.3 (8:15 pace)

Although it was short, I was drenched in sweat and liked feeling my legs pick it up a bit.  I have a thing where if I turn up the treadmill, I don't turn it down the full way ever again (hense going down to 7.1, then 7.2 etc.)  Overall, I felt fresh when I was done and not tired at all and finished with some light biking.  Off to work I went.....

Then, the glory continued when I met up with my Thursday night group that I haven't run with since before the holidays!  There is a guy there who is my pace who is also training for Boston that I love running with because we really push each other, especially at the tail end of all runs (we always seem to finish with 6:XX last mile!)  I figured we would do an easy 6 miles or so which would be perfect for my first double day back.  Well, the 'leader' of the group told my friend and I a route to take because we are faster than other runners in the group.  In his exact words "oh, it is about 7 miles or so."  We were stupid for believing him!  Suddenly it was pitch dark, we were running on hilly, snow covered country roads in the middle of nowhere with oncoming traffic in our faces that kept flashing their brights at us!  We thought we had missed the turn after we had been running for awhile.  Well, as you can see by my first line in this post the route ended up being a hilly 10 MILES and we barely got back to the running shop where we start before it closed!  It was a great run though, catching up about training and I was really happy with how well my legs and aerobics held up after only one week back.  We flew on the last mile as usual and ended being satisfied.  Not sure how my legs will feel tomorrow, but for now I'm feeling good!

One more day of teaching before winter break...i think i can....i think i can...