An 8-mile personal best for Christmas

I'm a few weeks into my structured GORUCK Challenge training now, and Lola and I have definitely been putting in the miles. On Sunday, just 10 days after increasing my load to 20 lb I took the dog out and completed an 8-mile run on the American Tobacco Trail. Normally my long runs are time-based, and Sunday's goal was 1:15, which put me just shy of 8 miles. I really wanted to hit the distance milestone, so I pushed through an extra 3-4 minutes. My joints were hurting a bit, definitely tired and unaccustomed to that length of workout, but they went the distance and ultimately I felt strong at the end.

With one little hiccup. I was chugging along right near the parking lot, trying to hang on until my GPS told me I had hit the 8-mile mark. Evidently the fatigue in my muscles meant that I wasn't picking up my feet as much as usual, and I tripped on a root in the trail. It caught me off guard, and I went down hard, landing on my side and barely missing Lola. I let out a pretty hefty grunt, which may or may not have startled a man and his little daughter walking across the creek. Lola looked a little confused, too.

Anyway, I wasn't hurt; just shook it off and finished what turned out to be the last 50 ft or so of my run. I felt kinda stupid for getting careless, but learned to pay special attention to my footing when I'm fatigued. I was also pleased that my instinctive reaction was not to try to stop my fall too hard with my hands; I pretty much just twisted sideways and let my body absorb the impact. I got away with just a scrape on the knee.

When I got back to the car I was SO excited to have covered 8 miles - which is longer than any other run I've ever done by at least a mile. To do so with a 20lb pack AND finish with an average pace of 9:45/mile was a huge confidence boost. That pace probably doesn't sound very impressive, but it's faster than most of the shorter training runs I've done with the 20lb pack, and you have to factor in occasional short stops for the dog. I never expected to increase my pace during the longest run of my life!

So far I've done a pretty good job adhering to the training program I developed a few weeks ago. I'm carefully increasing the length of my runs and the weight I'm carrying every week, and runs like this one just make me feel so optimistic about where I can get to by the time the Challenge comes.

Christmas is around the corner, and I'll be travelling back to Houston this week to see the family, so I know that the workout routine is going to be disrupted quite a bit. It feels really good to end the first "block" of my training with a personal best. Now I think it's time for some primo "recovery workouts," by which I mean sitting around and eating candy by the Christmas tree.

Note: this post was written in mid-January 2012 (when I launched my blog), but is back-dated to reflect the journey I've been on as I train for the GORUCK Challenge.