9 miles!!

This morning I got up at 6 am and drove down to the lakefront and jogged 9 miles. It was a beautiful morning for a run and the scenery was awesome.

My lets are hurting now, though! Especially after basketball on Monday night (which was definitely my speed workout for the week).

I've heard from several people now that swear by "run 10, walk 1". You run for 10 minutes and then walk quickly for 1 minute. The idea is that you can run enough faster during those 10 minutes to more than make up for the 1 minute of walking. Also, for the long runs it really breaks up the monotony of it because you're thinking in 10 minute chunks instead of 9 miles chunks. Each time you start jogging, you only have to be able to make it for 10 min.

So, I was resistant to this run/walk combo when I first heard about it because it felt like cheating to me. I figured that if you're going to run a half-marathon, you should actually run the whole thing (or at least do everything you can to). But then my co-worker told me that she took the Running Room's half-marathon class and they were taught the 10/1 run/walk combo, did it on their training runs, and were encouraged to use it in their half-marathons!

I decided to give it a try today. It was great! Knowing that at any given time I only had to run slowly enough to make it for 10 minutes (instead of another 8, 7, 6, etc. miles) made huge difference both mentally and physically. When I was in Chicago and ran 8 miles, I averaged about 13:09 per mile. Today, when I ran 9 miles, I averaged 12:46 per mile (and that's including the walking times). So I improved my average speed by 23 seconds (that's actually really significant) even while adding a mile!

So, I'm a convert! This is actually a real running strategy (at least in my book) rather than just a way to make the running easier. I'm psyched!