Monday, August 04, 2008

The 10 Mile Mark

I ran 10 miles yesterday. On my Facebook page I said 16K because it sounds longer, and also because I live in a metric country. But either way you say it, 10 miles is a long way to run. I ran up to a place called Bishan Park. If you live in Singapore and you haven't been to Bishan park, you need to go. It's beautiful, and I'm not even an outdoor person. I mean, I seriously could live in a bunker and it wouldn't bother me. But running the length of it (1 mile) and back was the most enjoyable part of any run I've done so far, aside from the fact that people kept passing me running. I told myself they were just running around the park and surely not training for a half-marathon. But who am I kidding? I'm a novice - accept it Gina!

On the website where I found my training schedule, this should be my last long run before the race. I'm a week ahead in my training, so I plan to do one more next week since I'm not used to running long distances. And also because I don't quite believe Hal Higdon when he says, "Don't worry about making the final jump from 10 miles in practice to 13.1 miles in the race. Inspiration will carry you to the finish line."

Now I know how I felt those last 2 miles yesterday. And I'm telling you that I'd have been hard pressed to find the amount of inspiration that would have carried me yet another 3 miles after I was done. I had my GPS in hand the last 1/2 kilometer watching it slowly tick up, going, "One more tenth Gina, come on! One more tenth of a kilometer!"

Three weeks until the race. Pray that I finish strong.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Gina!
Good work on your training and don't worry about jumping to 13.1 miles. The final race is truly much easier than your training run - I'd guess that when you look back, your 10 mile training run will be your hardest run. I ran the TC full marathon in 1995 and 1996 and the longest training runs I did were 18 and 20 miles. And they both were much harder than finishing the actual race (it's hard to keep going for 3 hours when noone's watching.)