Dead Bunny Play Time

Saturday was the first official "long run" of my marathon training - 45 minutes was the goal. I had been on the treadmill all week, but I was absolutely giddy when I woke up and it was tolerable outside on Saturday morning. I leashed up the dog, and we were out the door!

It was actually 10 more minutes before we started, as I had to let him take care of all his business AND get a quick swim. THEN we were off! But we stopped about 20 steps later so that my dog could roll around on a dead bunny in the road. Then I had to let him get back in the river to rinse away the dead rabbit stank and replace it with the signature Tennessee River dead fish stank. THEN we were off!

I felt great during the run! I was shocked (SHOCKED) at how easy it was going. I started to wear out around the 40:00 mark, but I finished the run without too much trouble. I came home and hit up the ol runstoppable.com to see what my distance was, and I figured out why the run was so easy. My pace was around 11:30, a full 90 seconds slower than usual. I was kind of bummed out, but I guess you are supposed to take the pace down for a longer run.

I was supposed to run again on Sunday, but we went to church with the visiting in-laws, and the rest of the day was filled with in-law entertaining fun. Today was a scheduled rest day, so I did yesterday's missed run this morning. I only had 35:00 scheduled, so the dog went with me again today. I am thinking that Saturday's long run just wore his ass out, because I did quite a bit of waiting on my dog today. We narrowly avoided the still present dead bunny, but he did almost pull my arm off attempting to repeat Saturday's dead bunny play time.

Today was a good 35:00, and I was back at my usual pace of 10:00ish per mile. I don't know how I changed my pace up, but I did. By the end of my run, I had convinced myself that I had only gone about a mile - so I was surprised to discover that I did 3.5.