7 miles!

Yesterday morning I did something I wasn't sure I could do-- I jogged 7 miles!

It's amazing how nervous about it I was on Sunday night and even for the first couple of miles on Monday during the run.

7 miles is over half of the 13.1 mile distance of the half-marathon and is significantly farther than I've ever run before (last week's about 5.5miles being the previous longest).

I decided to get up early and drive down to the lake shore and run along the path there because it's really hard to find room to run 7 miles near my house, especially since I don't want to do hills on my long run days.

It was a beautiful place to run, but even with the beauty, 7 miles is a long ways to run. And miles 2 and 3 were definitely the hardest mentally. Even at my slow pace, I felt ready to stop after 3 miles and I wasn't even halfway done yet! It didn't help that my podcasts hadn't downloaded onto my ipod for some reason, so I only had 40 minutes left in "This American Life" from the week before and was saving it for the last 40 minutes of the run.

But I did it. I eventually got to 3.5 miles, then ran a bit farther (so I'd be more than halfway done when I turned around) and turned around and jogged back.

It took me 1 hr and 36 minutes to do it, but I did it! 12:23, 13:05, 13:45, 14:13, 14:37, 14:34, 13:16. Average: 13:42.