iHurt

That's right, I hurt. I hurt badly. 6 miles today was not just any old six miles...It was six miles of HILLS. If you know Austin, you know these hills. Like the one down by Mozart's off of Enfield? I kicked that thing's butt! But now, many, many hours after my run, it is kicking my butt (quite literally...and my feet, and my hips, and well...my whole body.)

If you haven't figured out by now, my run was a little bit of a killer. I had everything going against me - I didn't run this week (bad mistake #1), I didn't hydrate before the run (really, really bad mistake #2), and in the 11-12 minute mile group, we started out and hit those Austin hills with a 9:30 pace WITH walk breaks...that means we were running around a 8:30 to 8:40 mile (really, really, really bad mistake #3 and stupid mistake #1). Then there was the heat and humidity factor. Remember me talking about fall a few posts back? Yeah, fall is gone. It's dead. It was replaced by 83° heat at 7:00 in the morning. Oh, and this blanket - yes you read right - blanket of humidity. I was drenched in sweat by the end of my run - soaking wet from head to toe.

Lessons learned? You betcha. First of all, I will never, ever again in the 20-something weeks left of this program and in the rest of my life leave my house to run without drinking at least a glass of water. That put me in such a bad position! I downed all the water in my hydration belt (21 oz.) in the first 3 miles. When we had a water stop, I had to refill my bottles and then I downed all that in the next 3 miles. And then after the run, I had at least 3 Ozarka bottles of water, plus some when I got home...and I'm STILL thirsty. Bad, bad bad.

Lesson number two. Never again will I be "too tired" to run during the week. Thirty minutes is all that is required of me, not a lifetime! I think I can squeeze in thirty minutes to keep my endurance up.

Lesson number three. If my pace group is being competitive and thinking that we need to keep up with the 4:1 group (four minutes running, one minute walking; I'm in the 3 :1 group), then I will fall back into the slow 3:1 group. Because there is nothing more horrible than having a quarter of a mile left to go and feeling like every muscle in your body is glued to the ground with some super sticky super-glue.

7 miles next week on the "scenic" route...which I have a sneaking suspicion means more hills ;)

Here's to Austin!