I RAN 8 MILES - AND THEN SOME!!!

Well, yesterday's run was not easy. Even though we started our run at 7 AM, it was already warming up outside. I can tell that running in the heat is not going to be my favorite thing to do, not to mention the fact that I am really going to need to make sure I am drinking plenty of water all the time so that I am well hydrated when it comes time to run. I don't think I drank much water on Friday. Come to think of it, I may have had some water, but I do recall a cup of coffee and 3 caffinated sodas over the course of the day. What was I thinking? So yesterday when I woke up I was thirsty. I drank a glass of water, filled up 2 water bottles on my water belt and headed out to meet the team for our 8 mile run on the canals of Modesto.
The first 4 miles I ran with the ladies that I usually try to run with ( I say this because they keep a little bit faster pace than me so it's good for me to try to keep up with them), but by about mile 5, I started realizing that we were keeping a pace of better than an 11 minute mile, which, combined with the heat, was too fast for me. The speed combined with the heat was really making me feel like I was pushing it too hard. I decided to slow down a little bit. When I say slow it down, I was still in the 12's so, for me, I was still keeping a very respectable pace.

I am so thankful to the people that volunteer to man water stations for us. We have them every 2 miles on our route and I fully took advantage of them, filling up both bottles at the last stop so that I could keep taking in water during the last 2 miles. It was a hard run, but I did it and that felt good. My Nike+ said I went 8.5 miles which may be a little over the actual distance, but I compared it to another gal who's said a little over 8.2 so I was in the ballpark. If there is some sort of freak heatwave in San Francisco in October, I'm never going to finish!

Later on yesterday, I realized that I probably was not hydrated enough for that run, because I felt pretty terrible most of the day. I had one of those I-haven't-been-drinking-enough-water-headaches. You may know its cousins, the I'm-trying-to-give-up-caffine-headache and the I-drank-too-much-beer-last-night-headache. My eyes were actually bloodshot! So, yeah, I had a running hangover. When Ethan took his morning nap, I decided to do the same. Having that hour of sleep felt really good, though I still had a slight headache most of the day. When will I realize that I need to drink lots of water everyday? I do really well with it for a few days and then I slack off, which isn't always a problem, but with all this running, breast feeding, and days of 100 plus degree weather, I really need to be vigilent about my water intake. I would like to think that I've learned my lesson...for now!