Into the Woods (and back again)

Some of you may recall, from earlier in this blog, that I was excited to run in Munich because I was right next to the woods.  That turned out to be somewhat true.  I am right next to some woods, although there is not a whole lot of 'woods' there.  You're through it in around a quarter of a mile.  When I was thinking 'woods,' I was thinking more along the lines of somewhere that had trees for miles and miles.

(I don't want to knock my local woods.  There is a beer garden in there.  A beer garden in the woods within a 5-minute walk of your house is never, under any circumstances, a bad thing).

Today was my first 'long run' in a long time.  I call it a 'long run,' even though it was 5 miles, which is only one mile further than I have been running every week.  But Sunday is long run day and I hadn't actually run 5 miles in...well....I'm not sure, but it's been an awfully long time.  I decided to head for the real woods. It's easy enough: you take the graveyard path, except instead of turning, you stay straight, and eventually boom!  You are at the woods.  The only problem is that the run there is about 2 miles, so anything less than a 5-mile run doesn't really work.

This is what I mean by 'the woods'!  Actual picture of actual forest in which I actually ran this morning. (Image: http://geo.hlipp.de/photos/01/05/010594_f0feb055.jpg)

The woods were totally worth it though.  It was great!  There were trees and paths, just like I imagined it.  And it was quiet, apart from other bikers and runners who enjoy actual woods as well.  Also, the weather today was ideal: in the low 60s with sun, but not too much sun.  I could not have asked for better conditions and I was reminded just how nice it is to run routes like this on days like this.

There was no question in my mind that I was going to finish this run.  In fact, it went more smoothly than plenty of my other recent runs.  My calves were a bit tight to start, but that went away pretty quickly and by the end, I was running pretty well.  Quite well, actually.  It was a great run overall.  Made me feel much more confident about doing this half-marathon.  After all, that's only this run doubled, plus a 5k on top of it <-- okay, I know that this is not the way of thinking about it one bit...you train so that you can run further and better, so today was a good sign!  And it only requires adding a mile a week for a while.  Since more than eight weeks remain before the half-marathon, I will be just fine.

The other victory from today is that I successfully completed another week of training without any major complaints (one minor one, but that happens).  This is encouraging not only because I feel better about the plan overall, but also because the next two weeks are the same distances and mileage as this week.  So I'll have some time to get accustomed to it.  Victory!