Bach Party and Another Long Run

(Pic from Sunday 15 mile run - me, and my man.)

Where to begin?

Let's see, last I reported was my Tuesday 8 mile tempo run, next run was 11 miles scheduled to happen on Thursday. Due to life going on I moved this to Friday thinking one less day of recovery before my long run shouldn't be an issue. I went during the middle of the day with perfect cool and cloudy skies. I ended up finding myself on a network of trails around Vancouver and was easily able to get in 11 miles. I had started from home with no real plan in place except to check out the area and I came across some good trails. Anyway, my run went like this:

Miles: 11.01

Avg Pace: 8:20

Avg HR: 170 bpm

It felt great!

After the run I rushed to get ready and showered. I had to head to pick up my wedding dress and do some other errands in Portland before meeting up at my friends house for pre-bach fun. I got my dress and had fun trying it on although I was about to pass out due to not eating anything. This wedding stuff is all starting to become real which is getting me happy and freaking me out all at once. Ahhhh! Planning a wedding, I've found, is very similar to training for a marathon - it is all that you want to talk about or think about and you're excited but nervous at the same time.

Anyway, I showed up at my friend's place and surprise, my fiance was there. I was like, what? He wasn't supposed to be around on my girl's night out. I brushed it off and started on glass of wine and garden tour when suddenly my BFF from Michigan jumped out from behind the tree! I had NO idea she was coming and was totally shocked to see her there. What a great surprise. Seriously, the night ended up being so much fun and I got to spend it with the PBRs! Everyone was in rare form and hopefully had a blast. Things got a little fuzzy toward the end of the night but nothing too out of control. I don't know how I did it but I ended up waking up early and going for a 5 mile easy run on the river front. Amazing. I spent the rest of the weekend relaxing up at the lake and having everything catered and taken care of by my awesome future husband.

Sunday I briefly considered postponing my long run (15) until Monday. I had consumed a bunch more wine on Saturday night and was still sluggish and hungover from Friday. But i decided in the long run it would be best to get it out of the way, do a different course than from home and not have to carve out 2+ hours on a Monday. I'm so glad I did. We ran the Historic Columbia River Highway route (a run Jen and Zach often do) and I ended up doing 15.2 miles. Stats:

Total miles: 15.2

Avg Pace: 8:31

Avg HR: ?? (forgot Garmin!)

The first hour of this run just breezed by but the last 30-45 minutes started to get boring and taxing. I wasn't sore per se, but my muscles were just tired. Actually, more my joints than muscles. I didn't work out my hydration well nor my nutrition so next time I need to be better at that. I'm actually very happy with my pace too - this is the longest run I've done in probably 2 years and I went faster than I'd expected. I bet if I'd been better prepared I could have inched it up a bit and still felt comfortable. Although it is still scary to think that I'll need to run at 8:00 pace to hit my goal of a 3:30 marathon. I don't even want to think about that yet.