16 miles. WOOT.

the 16 mile run on saturday was probably the best i've felt on a long distance run in quite awhile. the shins were behaving awesome, pace was pretty awesome, weather was super awesome...all in all, it was awesome. i thoroughly enjoyed being out on the trail for nearly two and a half hours. The only downer is that aside from me and my mentor, everyone else on my team is injured. I ended up running the last 11 miles by myself, but i enjoyed that and was able to run my own pace (about a 9:00 avg) and just enjoy the April morning.

Now, what looms ahead of me this Sunday is the Spirit of St. Louis half-marathon. Actually, it's not really looming...I at least know that i can run a half-marathon with no problem, but I am a little bit worried about how running 13 miles on concrete is going to make my shins feel. Those silly legs can be so tempermental and moody. So far, i've been really fortunate to not have any major problems with them. *knock on wood*. We'll see how it goes...I'm super excited for my first half-marathon race, okay scratch the term 'race', my first half-marathon run, especially since my former cross country co-hort and friend Crystal is going to run it with me. And i've set myself a finish goal of 2:15. If i beat that, i get to by myself a new pair of strappy sandals i've been stalking. oh, the motivating factors of a twentysomething female...