First (almost) eight-miler

The route I ran home from school today

Today was my first eight mile run in preparation for training for the Onion Man Triathlon in just over two months. I decided the best way to get everything done today that I wanted to do was to take the bus to school, work for a few hours, and then RUN home. I've wanted to do this pretty much since we bought our house three years ago. But at 5.5 miles, it's sort of a big commitment, for me anyway. Up until this winter, 5 miles was a long @$$ run for me. So today I had a plan. I wanted to get in at least seven miles, eight if my knees and hips felt good.

I left school a little after 4:00 this afternoon. I was a bit worried about the weather. Anyone who has been in Seattle for the last few days knows what I'm talking about! We've been having unusually cold and crazy, bipolar weather. Yesterday I biked to school in what started as sprinkles, turned to downpour, and then SNOW! In March! And then, when I came out of the gym an hour later, it was blindingly sunny. In any case, I obsessed this afternoon about what to wear, specifically, whether to wear my raincoat and headband/ear cover thingy. It seems silly to worry about little things like that, but for a run that takes well over an hour, making the wrong decision could end in being wet and cold way longer than necessary.

I ended up taking both. The headband I wore OVER my reflective yellow Scampering Hominids baseball cap (I'm sure this looked super cool) and the raincoat I took off and on several times as the rain started and stopped, but I'm glad I took it.

So left school and headed up 20th, the route I would usually take on my bike. Then to get some extra distance I headed up to 35th and ran through Meadowbrook, then back across Lake City, and because I knew I still wasn't even at seven miles, I ran a bit of a loop around my neighborhood before letting myself go home. I wasn't tracking how far I'd run, but I knew I must have been close to eight miles. I mostly felt great and even got a bit of a second wind for the last two miles. My hip felt fine but my knees did get achy, but that is nothing new.

I mapped my run on the Daily Mile when I got home which said it was 7.8 miles. If I had known I was that close to eight miles I would have kept running!