Easy 9 miles

This morning's long run was 9 miles. It felt so nice and easy, especially compared to last weeks long run. I ran from the house to caruth lakes and back. Again today I tried to concentrate on keeping my pace under a certain goal. I found that if I continued to do that I could keep my pace much faster, but still comfortable. I also tried to run negative splits, which I accomplished by running the second 4.5 miles about 3 minutes faster that the first. I got up and out the door much earlier today, thanks to some inspiration ( some might call gentle prodding) from my husband. It was probably 15 degrees cooler, and that made a huge difference. I didn't feel as dehydrated, and probably took in about half as much liquid as I did last week. Perhaps I was also a little cautious about overdoing the fluids as I didn't want a repeat of last week's nausea and ralph either. I always love the point in the long run when I am three miles to the finish. For some reason that's a magic number to me, I know exactly what that distance feels like to run and how far it is to my home, and I know I can run it pretty fast even up my least favorite last hill. This is usually the point in my run when I turn on the jets becaue I know I don't have to save any more energy, I'm almost done. When I get to the last mile or so I can full out sprint because in my mind the run is over. I love the last push to speed up at the end. Not one single chafe anywhere, and I even wore a shirt with sleeves. I guess it's not so much sleeves that chafe as it is cotton sleeves that chafe. I also added a few new songs to my playlist which for some reason makes me look forward to my run just a little bit more. Wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to get up early after a summer of sleeping in, but I know next week it's going to be slow out of the gate getting up that much earlier to run before work. I'm also realizing it's going to take a little planning to coordinate workout schedules with hubby who's triathlon training. Looks like we have some early mornings in our future.