18 Miles with Obstacles

This morning Lauren and I headed out for our first 18 mile training run of the season. I must admit that 18 miles is a bit intimidating, I was sort of dreading it all weekend long – but I kept trying to tell myself that it was only 2 miles longer than last weekend! I upped my liquid intake for the run adding two little bottles of half gatorade/half ice to my mix and it really helped me out! I was packed down with liquid and shot bloks before we headed out!

Since Lauren and I have been doing a tour de Philly running routes, we decided to try another new route today!

We started off along the Manayunk Canal and made our way towards the Schuylkill Trail to Conshohocken.

This trail choice ended up being super fun because it was like an obstacle course the entire way!

After Hurricane Irene and all the recent flooding in Philadelphia, especially along the Schuylkill River, there was definite signs of damage along the trail today.

  

   

  

It was a very muddy run – at some points during our run our path was completely submerged!

But it was also very scenic as well.

  

  

Eventually we made our way to Conshohoken and both Lauren and I were feeling great 9 miles in!

Now we just had to turn around and head home!

Turning around and then hitting double digits on the way home got tough, but miraculously we managed to pick up the pace and I believe we had negative splits!

The weather was cool, we had a bit of rain spitting at us during the run, but it was a perfect running day.   

And the best part about this run was that I finished it feeling amazing!

I love finish a long run with a smile. Makes me excited for the Marathon!

In other news – I seemed to have misplaced my Garmin charger so I ran without it today and used iMapMyRun on my iPhone today. I really liked it and believe it to be even more accurate than my Garmin!

Check out these awesome maps to show our route!