22 mile training run....my longest & fastest ever...

Until today, I've never run a training run longer than 21 miles & that was last year.  Last years 21 miler was at a 9:55 pace. This years 22 miler was at a 9:45 pace. It felt slower than that so I'm surprised.  I'm just glad it is over & we can taper.  I was just not feeling the love much this morning & it took me a while to come alive & wake up.  It had been a long week.  I'm hoping to get some really good, long sleep tonight.  We met Cheryl & Jonathon at about 4:30am-ish.  We had to drop fluids at Ravenwood High School then meet them at the Y.  I ran just over 2 miles with them.  We picked up Tracie & Danielle at 5am at the Y.  I will say one thing, it will be very nice not to have to wear a fuel belt, reflective gear, & a head lamp (around my waist) in Chicago.  In other words, I'll be running a little bit lighter.  We had wanted to run in Shelby but it seemed like everyone had to be somewhere fast after the run, hence, the 4:30am start time.  Parents with kids in sports on Saturdays...marathon training can be done...where there's a will, there's a way to get the long runs done.   I salute you all that accomplish this goal! Needless to say, we didn't run a "pancake flat" 22 miler like we had planned but we'll live.  Crockett is mostly flat but we ran a lot of different neighborhoods that weren't & over near Ravenwood High...that hill just makes me crazy.  When I walked up it, I already had 16.5 miles on my legs.  Not fun!  I took quite a few short walk breaks on most of the hills so I'm A OK with the 9:45 pace.  The key for me will be to not get distracted in Chicago & forget to take in fuel.  You can pretty much tell by my pace when I was taking in hammer gel endurolyte pills, shot bloks, & drinking water/powerade.  I'm not sure about the humidity but my iPhone said 66 degrees when we left the house.  It felt a little cooler than that when we started.  I could feel the temp go down a bit an hour later.  I was soaked to the bone in sweat when we finished but it wasn't anywhere near as bad two weeks ago.

22 miles: Overall time 3:34:44  Overall pace 9:45

Mile 1: 10:20
Mile 2: 10:49 (head lamp fell apart & we're scrambling looking for my batteries)
Mile 3: 10:42 (putting head lamp back together...laugh with me!)
Mile 4: 9:43
Mile 5: 9:21
Mile 6: 10:11 (fueling)
Mile 7: 9:19 (finally finding my groove)
Mile 8: 8:39
Mile 9: 9:01
Mile 10: 9:17
Mile 11: 9:48(fueling)
Mile 12: 9:24
Mile 13: 10:23 (filled up water bottles & guzzled powerade at the high school)
Mile 14: 9:37
Mile 15: 10:11(fueling)
Mile 16: 9:24
Mile 17: 10:41(fueling)
Mile 18: 9:30
Mile 19: 9:28
Mile 20: 8:59(YES!)
Mile 21: 9:38
Mile 22: 9:55 (had to finish up .6 in the parking lot)

Next weekend 14-15 miles......