Early Friday Miles

After 22 miles on Christmas Day, I gave myself Thursday off.  It is actually amazing how well I am recovering though.  I was sore right after the 22 miler, but felt good yesterday.  I probably could've run 8 miles or so if I tried to.  That was after a big few days earlier in the week too.

Emily asked me if I wanted to do a Friday morning semi long run (a long run by her standards).  I hate mornings, but I enjoy running with others and particularly her.  We usually chat quite a bit and the run goes by in no time.

We wanted to run somewhere different, so we agreed to run at the Arts Quest Center by the old steel.  She never ran around there.  I haven't really been there much since I ended my group runs there.  She wanted to run 10 miles, I was hoping for 12.

I arrived a bit late and was glad that Emily had walked up right before me.  I didn't want her to have to wait in the cold.  It was cold as usual.  It was in the 20s again, but at least there was no wind.  I wore the regular attire, including the fleece vest.

We started out heading west and ran over the Hill to Hill Bridge.  It is nice to run through Main Street Bethlehem during the Christmas season.  One of the problems was that my regular group run route in this area was only about 4 miles.  We needed a lot of extra mileage.

I decided that we should do a fairly long out and back on Broad Street.  This was trickier than I anticipated.  It had a decent uphill that I didn't realize.  Also, due to the light snowfall yesterday, it was snowy and icy.  The footing wasn't great.  I think my trail running has helped me a lot in conditions like this.  It seems that I shorten my stride.

We ran past my old dentist.  I don't remember quite where we turned around, but it was at about 3 miles.  We were likely close to Allentown.  We had just run downhill before the turnaround, so now we were heading back uphill again.  Early on, I thought I'd struggle a lot with the run.  My legs didn't feel strong, but they came around as the miles went by.

The pace started to drop and we began clicking off miles in the low 8 minute range.  Not too challenging for me, but the hills did make it a little tricky.  When we got back to Main Street, we headed farther out, toward Moravian College.  That meant another uphill.

I was attacking the hills, like I often do.  I thought Emily might be struggling with them at this point because her breathing seemed labored, but that has happened before and she's been able to stick right with me.  With this uphill, we ran a 7:27 mile.  I couldn't believe how easy it felt for me.  I guess it is just me getting stronger.

Running through Moravian was nice.  I then decided we would head toward Liberty High School.  We weren't even at 6 miles at this point, but it seemed like we had run a lot more.  Running back into town, we encountered more hills.  Emily slipped back a little bit.  I tried to slow down, but didn't want to slow too much as I was in a groove.  We came to a couple red lights and that helped her recover.

I felt bad when I realized that we would have to run up the Minsi Trail Bridge.  That is steeper than you would think when you are riding in a car.  Emily felt back here too, but made it over.  There is just a fence on the side of you and it makes for a weird perspective with the river down below. 

We were only over 8 miles when we got near the starting location.  I wanted to run part of Lehigh's campus to add distance.  That meant another hill.  I'm sure Emily wasn't thrilled about it, but she didn't complain.  She made it up that hill too.  She is a tough cookie.  I give her a lot of credit.  I might've packed it in early today if I was feeling how she was.

We got back to steel area as we approached mile 10.  I planned it out pretty close to accurate.  We actually finished up at 10.25 miles.  She ran hard at the end and I decided to follow her.  I then kept going on my own.  I ran a shorter loop around the steel area to finish up with 12 miles.

It was a solid, productive day.  Most importantly, I had some good company to make the run easier.  I also left myself with only 6 miles to run tomorrow to hit 70 again for the week.  That would be 70 miles in 3 of the last 4 weeks.

I'm not sure yet what I'll do tomorrow.  I'm leaning toward the BCR outing.  That is if I can get up on time.  I didn't get much sleep last night.  I'm also kind of concerned about the trail conditions because they are running at the Boat Launch.  I may opt to run toward Riverview if I go to the run.

12 miles - 1:36:23 (8:02 pace)