14 miles with friends

Saturday I had 14 miles scheduled. I was trying not to think about it too much, but this would be my longest distance…ever… I figured this was a good time to run with the group as I thought some company would be nice. We met at 7 am at Eau Claire. Most of the ladies were running 20 mi, one was running 11 mi. I was going to stick with the 20 milers and turn around when I hit my halfway point, but Tami, who is running New York City in November, opted to run the 14 with me so I had company the entire way. Honestly the miles were just flying by….and we were running 20:1 intervals. Let’s compare that to the 4:1 I was running a few weeks ago… I’ve been doing 9:1 most recently, but I barely noticed the transition to the 20:1 for the most part. We ran along the Bow River, through Edworthy Park, up to Shouldice and into Bowness. At Bowness Tami and I turned around and headed back. Our pace started to pick up without too much thought but we were feeling good about it. We did opt to drop to 10:1 intervals in order to finish strong, and our pace kept getting faster and faster. 2 hr 42 min later we were back at Eau Claire, ready for breakfast and feeling terrific that we had knocked 14 mi out that day. It was great having company on the run, and I felt like the ladies I was running with on Saturday were a great match pace-wise. I also felt pretty strong at the end, and the legs weren’t tired. The run did hit me after breakfast and knocked me out for a 4 hour nap though… But otherwise no soreness post run at all.