Long Run

Yesterday afternoon I set out for a 9-mi run.  I ended up running 8.89 miles in a little over 1:31, for an average speed of 5.85 mph.  I had a lot of annoying problems.  After about 1.5 mi, I decided I had to go to the bathroom, so I kept my eye out for a porta-potty.  I was running on Rock Creek Trail, which has lots of parks, so I figured I wouldn't have to wait to long.  I saw one at about 2 mi, but the potty was completely full.  I was afraid if I added anything, it would overflow - pretty gross.  So I kept going, but I'd wasted some time turning off all my apps and stuff to get ready to use the potty quickly.

At about 4.2 mi, I found another potty.  I paused RunKeeper and used the potty - relief!  However, when I started RunKeeper again, it got confused and did not notify me at 4.5 mi, the next half-mile.  So I missed my turn-around point and ran to about 4.66 mi.  On the way back, RunKeeper decided to notify me at approximately each half-mile after 4.2 mi, which didn't match with the self-pacing I was trying to do, so I kept pulling out my phone to look at the app.  A little after 6 mi, I accidentally hit "stop" on the app.  There's no confirmation for this!  So I had to start up a new "run" to finish off my tracking.  Grrr.    At least the app went back to notifying me every half-mile.

I kept up with my goal of about 6.0 mph until about 7.5 mi.  Then I really had to go to the bathroom again, which made it harder and harder to run.  I put in some walking breaks.  Finally, with a total of about 8.89 mi for both "runs", I accidentally hit "stop" again and gave up on the whole thing.  But I was farther from my car at that point than I had planned, so I had a longer walking cool-down than anticipated.  At least having to go to the bathroom didn't bother me so much when I was walking.

Besides the bathroom issues, which I don't usually have, the run definitely got a lot harder after 6 miles.  My legs were starting to hurt.  The weather was sunny, but it was only about 80 F and not too humid, thank goodness.

This morning, I went to my usual Sunday morning boxing class.  I haven't done this for awhile because of vacation, so it was good to get back.  A new lady was using the bag next to mine, and she said at the end that she was really impressed by me, which felt good.