Feb. 12 16 miles

I had a pretty good run this morning. I headed out the door at about 8:00 and it was 30 degrees out. I wore my tights, a tshirt, and a long sleeve tshirt because I was too afraid I would get hot on a 16 mile run. I was right, its not that I got too hot its that i was sweating and I wore a regular cotton tshirt. I know better than to do this because I have gotten spoiled by my tech shirts. Of course the cotton tshirt became heavy and damp and that drove me crazy. I did my run through seneca, which was amazing this saturday morning. It was filled with runners, everyone giving you a good morning head nod. There was also a race going on which I think added to the number of runners in the park. I love running in seneca on a saturday morning because of all the runners. There seems to be a mutual "I know how you feel" that you get from passing a fellow runner and giving a head nod. The run went pretty well, I was feeling good. I still have the nagging pain in my arch and the pain in my right knee, but I bought new shoes on sunday so I am hoping that helps. This was also the first run of this training session that I had to eat the gu. I stopped and bought and powerbar gel strawberry banana and also picked up a hammergel apple cinnamon. Last marathon training season I could only eat the powerbar gel , but people kept telling my to try the hammergel. I packed the hammergel with me and ate it at mile 12.5. As usual I began to gag. The taste of it is really good but it is too thick for me to eat. I looked ridiculous trying to get it down while other runners were passing me. I finally managed to eat half of it and decided that it was enough to get me through the next 4 miles. I guess I am going to stick with the powerbar gel from now on. Other than that the run was pretty good. I am glad to be to the point in my training where over half my long run feels easy. It wasn't until about mile 14 when I started to wish I was running with someone to keep me motivated. This shows I am making progress.