Monday, September 8, 2008 [21M]

Bay trail to Burlingame. Since yesterday turned out to be a short day I opted to go for a long run this afternoon. I was out of Club O around 6 and headed north on the bay trail, going past Marina Lagoon. The plan was to do an out and back and wanted to go out for 60-70 minutes before turning back. I started out at whatever pace felt comfortable and was somewhat surprised to split a 6:40 for the first mile along Marina Lagoon. It was good to see, though, that I was moving at a decent clip and feeling very relaxed. I pretty much maintained the pace on the way out and since I was feeling good I decided not to make the turn until I was 70 minutes out. I knew I was running faster than 7:00 pace but I wanted to be maked sure I could call this 20 and didn't mind going a bit over. Turns out I was running 6:40 pace on the way out as  measured the run to be exactly 10.5 each way. Making the turn after having already run over 10 miles and knowing that there's no shortcut home was a somewhat scary realization. My legs were getting a bit tired and I was shaking off some of the soreness from Saturday's race but I was still able to pick it up a bit on the way back. I wound up back in 2:18:15, running close to 6:30 pace for the most part with the last 3 miles at 6:20.  Runs like this one take me one step closer to making the decision to run a marathon some time soon. I've been debating about signing up for CIM  but have yet to commit myself to it.  It's really encouraging that I can put in a run like this one, comfortably moving at a decent clip without drinking much water or eating anything. The weather was nice and cool today, low 60s when I started, dropping in the high 50s as the sun was setting, so I only made a couple of stops for water and those were more of precaution than anything. The route was actually pretty good for such a run as there's a decent number of water fountains along the way so this might become a popular choice for my 20+ milers.