long run for my birthday – 1 mile for every 2 years

Today is the day. My big 3-0 birthday. I celebrated in style this morning with a long run :) I ran 1 mile for every 2 years of my life. Skinny Runner turned 30 not too long ago and was a little awesomer than me and ran 1 mile for EVERY year of her life. But seriously, 15 was all I could muster this morning.

I did it all on the treadmill too. Talk about a mind workout too. After today’s run, I think doing long runs on a treadmill is seriously great training for the mind-over-matter aspect of marathon running. How dull and boring can running, even with hulu on the whole time. I run soooo much better outside. I run faster, easier, stronger. I hit one hour and felt like I was dead, but knew I still had twice that to run.

But now, I’ll go outside for an hour and it is a piece of cake. If I can do it on a treadmill, I can do it outside. No problem!

Today’s long run stats: 15 miles, 2 hours 11 minutes, 8:44 average pace, .5-1.5% incline

I watched all of most recent The Biggest Loser episode and one and a half episodes of Color Splash on Hulu.com. I was hoping to watch New Girl or Modern Family, but the new episodes aren’t available to the lower class yet (only on hulu plus).

[My set up – treadmill in the corner facing a wall and large computer screen, hooked up
to my laptop, sitting on the window sill off to the side of the treadmill. Cords everywhere!]

My half marathon time was 1 hour 55 minutes – not bad

Overall miles and time. It took me a while to get a picture that wasn’t blurry. Never thought of stepping off the treadmill!

Me and my 30 year old self after 15 miles

I drank nuun on my run, always do. But rather than guzzle another 12 oz of it, I replenished my electrolytes with some tomato juice. I HATE V8 juice. Something about the carrot/celery flavor of it makes me want to spew my guts, but tomato juice on the other hand is like drinking cold tomato soup. I can handle that. Plus, it has a lot of sodium and potassium. A LOT!

 
[sodium – 470 mg, potassium 300 mg]

What I really wanted to accomplish on this run was to see how far my treadmill will go before shutting off. Some treadmills shut off after 60 minutes, some 99, etc. Let me just say, without even meaning to, I bought a stinkin’ awesome treadmill. Once I hit 99:59 I was waiting for it to turn off, but instead it switched to hours and minutes (instead of minutes and seconds).

So, I’m going to scratch that goal since I plan to NEVER run more than a few hours on the treadmill. I guess I’ll never know how long it will go (or maybe I could just read the manual, but that’s pretty boring!).

The rest of the first day in the third decade of my life (ugh) is going to be pretty chill. I’m blogging and watching cartoons with my little dudes while compressing my calves with these new BRIGHT “watermelon” socks from Pro Compression (sneak preview of my St. Patrick’s race day outfit). Maybe I’ll throw in some foam rolling later.

How are you celebrating my birthday ?