Today, I woke up bright eyed and not-so bushytailed and headed out to meet great new friend Holli (aka The Great Askini) for some half-marathon training. Not only has she been a great encourager, she is training with me, doing the half, and has donated to the cause. Talk about awesome!
We met at The Legacy Trail near the Kentucky Horse Park. Per their website, “The Legacy Trail is a 12 mile walking, biking, interpretive trail and public art venue. The Trail begins in the East End of downtown Lexington at the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden and runs to the Kentucky Horse Park. Over eight miles of the trail are off-street and are fully paved to accommodate every type of non-motorized user.” Is that not an amazing resource for a city to have? It just opened last year and this was the first time I used it.
We met a group there called John's Striders which is a running group that originally started through John's Run Walk Shop, a great running store here in Lexington. They were all geared up with their fuel belts, reflective vests, wind breakers, ear covers and such. Everyone goes at their own pace and distance. Can I just say how nice everyone was? I felt like a complete impostor there, but every person who passed by smiled and offered a “hello.” Before we started on our trek, a lady approached us and said she had lost 140+ pounds by doing her running, and that was great. So freakin' nice. When am I going to learn that not all people are judgmental? Really.
We started by going through the Kentucky Horse Park. We ended up doing a similar loop to when I did the Southern Lights Stroll 5K.
Awesome thing about going through the horse park? These guys!
Although it was cold (about 30 degrees), it was still great to be in the SUN! Although this hill at about mile 3 seemed a little daunting (it wasn't).
As Holli wrote on her blog, we originally were going 5 miles. Then it turned to 6. Then to 7. The time just flew by. I seriously felt like my 4 miler on the treadmill earlier this week took twice as long and was twice as hard.
When we finished our 7 (really, 7.22) miles, we were happy, as evidenced below:
Here are the final stats from the training:
So hooray! The half seems so much less daunting after this first long walk. I have a irritated spot on the outside of my right foot, but think that won't be an issue. First time wearing some new kicks, so they are now on their way to being broken in.
When I got home, hubs asked how far we went. I told him, and the first words out of his mouth were: “I'm proud of you.” It kind of made my heart swell. I'm proud of me (and Holli) too.
