Double digits

I wasn't sure how far I was going to go this morning, or how fast. It was a very nice morning, and I waited until a little after 9 so the temperature would be well past the freezing point. It was 48 when I started.

I was at the levee trail head, with a loose idea of running in about a mile, then back out and toward English Landing, and then back again. Since there wasn't a lot of wind, I stayed on the levee for the first 3.5 miles, which is the entire length of the trail. I didn't care about my time, so I kept a nice, consistent, easy pace. I never checked my watch the entire way.

I decided not to run the levee on the way back, so I dropped down onto the road, eventually hooking up to Horizons Parkway and Highway 9. I went off on a couple of spurs to lengthen out the run, since by now I was thinking in terms of 8-plus, and possibly as much as 10.

When I finally had looped back to the truck I was at 8.2 miles and still feeling fine, so I decided to run the levee trail for another mile, and then back again. The total at the end was 10.1, my first double-digit run since December. I had no idea at this point what my pace had been, but when I checked the overall, it was a surprising 9:11. A breakdown showed that all of my splits, after the second mile, were 9:10 or under, and most were at or under 9.

The run gave me 24 for the week, so my mileage has climbed every week since I started running again in early February.