Oh so close...

Today was a fairly big day for me. My parents have been in town from Washington for the past few days and there have been several social gatherings for my sister-in-law's graduation (she got her Ph.D. in Sociology on Thursday). Needless to say, it has been an insane weekend. In spite of all the craziness I've managed to still run at least 4 miles each morning. Today was the exception...

Last night was Ashley's grad party so, of course, I ate too much cake :) This morning I woke up with that super duper hungry feeling that you get when you eat too much food, too late the night before. So I decided to just go out and run without breakfast. Also, at the last minute I asked my brother, Justin, if he'd like to join me for a nice Saturday morning run before it started to get too hot (yeah, it's been over 100 degrees for the past few days). He did end up coming with and we both expected to run 3 or 4 miles and call it a day.

It was one of those fairly magical runs where everything feels really good. We decided to just keep going down the canal passed our usual end-point until further notice. As many people around me know, it has been my goal to run a 10-miler before leaving Phoenix. I didn't have the foggiest idea that I would almost accomplish that goal this morning-in spite of my hunger, my lack of sleep, the cake, and the heat.

I made a point not to ask Justin how far we had run on several occasions for fear that I would psych myself out and end up walking back. I was hoping that I had at least beat my personal record of 6.5 miles. So I asked as we were cooling down around the block, how far we had just gone. He told me he didn't want to tell me. My interpretation of this was that the last mile and a half to two miles were a bit of a struggle and we hadn't actually gone that far past my PR even though it sucked. I took a pessimistic guess of 7 miles and he told me it was just about 7.5. I have to admit that my heart sank a bit...then he told me that I had actually run about 9.5 miles (if you can't tell already, Justin knows distances along the canal very well...and I don't). He had also run ahead of me home to get us some water before cooling down. He ran inside and told everyone how far we had run and that I didn't know it yet. That was a fun secret to find out...

I've yet to reach my goal, however I'm much closer than I was before! The real 10 will be next week...