Week 8 of 18: 13 miles in 2:31:42

Well, I did it!  I successfully ran 13 miles just exploring- no parks or people, just me and the road.  I've decided the best way to explore a new area is to run it.  I saw more today running around and exploring than I've seen the year I've lived here.  My biggest battle running where I live is dealing with hills.  Every hill I ran down I had to run back up at some point, there's no flat 13 mile trek here, which is a good thing.  It reminds me of where I grew up in PA.  :)

I've now come across two people that I know from a local non-profit who've completed marathons.  My best bit of marathon advice, is to seek out other marathoner's for advice.  I've got the male perspective of running the Philly Marathon and was told "Go eat whatever you want.  I was eating pizzas, burgers, and beers when I trained for that one...and finished in 3:30".  Then I've got the women's perspective of "drink at least 80 oz of liquid the day before a long run, preferably 64 oz of water and the rest in a sports drink.  Then at miles 3, 6, 9 fuel with either powerade, chews and/or electrolyte tabs.  It's all mental, you can do it!".  This is also someone who runs faster than I could ride a bike and has completed Boston- someone to admire, because I'll never be at that level.  So given the fact that if I ate pizzas, burgers, and beers everyday I may turn into a blob, I decided to stick with the woman's advice, and it worked.  Shocker..

I ate well yesterday, but didn't starve myself of anything I truly wanted and hydrated using the above formula.  I also bought nuun in strawberry lemonade.  I had seen it at the sporting goods stores, but had no idea of it's purpose. It basically supplies the same stuff as gatorade and powerade, but with only 8g of sugar.  It's also a lot lighter, and almost has a bit of a fizzy taste.  I drank two glasses of that yesterday, instead of the sports drink.  I'll be using this again for sure, and it doesn't hurt that it's pink.

I also tried new fuel this week, again.  This time I bought the clif shot blocks.  I haven't tried them before because you can't see what they look like, the package hides them.  I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but with stuff like this I want to see texture, size, how many there are, color, etc.  I ate two at miles 4 and 8 and had one at mile ten.

Around mile 10.5 I decided I needed something more than water and dropped two nuun tabs into the remaining water in my Camelbak.

So speaking of the Camelbak... When I bought this thing I thought people were going to think I'm nuts running with this (because that's what I used to think when I saw people with them).  I only ended up passing two runner's today, since it was just me and the road.  The first runner I passed about 2 miles in and she also had a Camelbak, then around mile 6 I passed a guy with a Camelbak, too!  I was happy I wasn't the only one running in the 97% humidity with my Camelbak.

My run today cleared my head, I have no idea what I was thinking about while I ran, I honestly don't think anything.  I was more distracted by cars not hitting me to think.  I did find another bathroom on today's route- and this wasn't a porta-potty, this was a state park shed- like potty over (I'm pretty sure) a hole in the ground.  At least it was a solid structure, I guess.  Must've been around mile 6, considering it looks like I was at a turtle's pace (see below).

It also rained for a few minutes about halfway through my run, which was nice with all the hills.  Check out these hills, and YES I ran them all!!!

The best part of all: beating my half marathon time from May by 2 minutes.  Given the hills were NOTHING like this and the humidity doesn't compare, it's happening- I'm really starting to become a "runner".

Week 8 of 18 complete.  Almost halfway there, 10 weeks to go.  Bring it on Philly Marathon!