Tough 15 Miler

Today we ran the southern portion of the Austin marathon course. I think we ran the first 10 miles of the updated course before making a right on Windsor to take us back to Runtex. The weather sucked again. This is three long runs in a row starting with the Dallas marathon with warm, humid weather. I am not a fan of the Austin course, but did sign up on Wednesday. The new southern portion takes us almost to Ben White before turning off of Congress onto an alley that runs behind Chuck E. Cheese...definitely a scenic part of Austin! The goal was to go out easy, but after the first mile we settled into a pace of around 8:30 for miles 2-9. The pace dropped for miles 10-14 to between 8:50 and 9:00 as we ran through across Windsor, down Guadalupe, across MLK, and up San Jacinto...all mostly hilly. We sped up on the final mile going down Congress finishing with a 7:28. I felt a lot better this week than last week. I think I was better prepared with my nutrition and hydration. This was a really good confidence builder going into the 20 mile race next weekend and with the marathon in 6 weeks. I stretched with the group and called it a day.

Stats - 15 miles/2:10:25/8:41 pace