A rare week since the start of training that I didn’t feel all that awesome going into the long run. Was up every hour the night before, and woke up with a sore throat.

But that didn’t stop me from being slightly nervous excited for 15 miles when I left home at 5:15am! (Please don’t mind the shopping bags in the background. We just did our starting-school shopping the day before, and I reckon the bags will stay there until school actually starts)

4 of us ran the early 3 miles in darkness. The best thing I like about running in the dark is we are naturally slow trying to watch our step and the pace we are at is a nice really easy warm up.

Midrun freakout fun when we saw a black cloth/Tshirt on the cement sidewalk and mistook it for a dead/alive snake, animal, whatever it could be. 

We almost bumped headfirst into another running coming in from the opposite direction without light ! How he was running in that pitch darkness is beyond me!

Lorraine then spied a dog/animal unleashed on the sidewalk a little ahead so we took it a little cautiously while she had her mace handy.

And then stepping on pinecones caused another little whoop.

Finally, I caught my foot in a metal ring (what WAS that?) and hopped a couple and avoided tripping. 

After unearthing all traps on our 1.5 miles out, the return was relatively tame.

Is that some hardcore training run or what?

When we regrouped with the entire group, we started with the “Irish Neighborhood”. Apparently nicknamed so because of street names being Irish. I wonder if Ireland is hilly. Because this 3mile loop was hillier than hills ! To start out on such hills, ummm….. lets just say, I wasn’t mentally happy. Also, I stopped my Garmin when I stopped to tie my shoelaces, and never started it back on. I “lost” about 1.25 miles and I was p******. 

After that, the rebel yellows took a different route from the normal suggested schedule. It really was quite beautiful running right next to a little creek and a short distance of proper trails. 

That’s the silver comet trail on the bridge above.

 We went through the covered bridge, which has a one lane traffic. 

MLQ and myself just before we entered the covered bridge and started on the technical trail.

With the paused Garmin, my fueling time was off. I was surprised at how hungry and tired I felt at times. Hungry as in stomach growling hungry. And I weirdly craved chocolate midway. I even started the run hungry! I had woken up with stiff muscles and a sore throat, so that was on my mind. Not to mention that I’d already decided on Friday afternoon that today’s 15miles was going to be bad since everything else this week had been crappy and stressful.

Today’s run was also one where I learnt to value having a running partner. Tanya and I ran together pretty much the whole distance (except for the part where I stopped and took pics!) and without her, I doubt if I’d have attempted to run the last 2-3 miles. 

No matter how the run really was, it was exhilarating to record on dailymile –