Jes and I just got back from our run through the Sonoma Valley countryside and did so well that it made all of our work up to this point worth it. I don’t think we truly appreciated just how difficult our usual training grounds at Chastain Park are until today. As recently as Tuesday we were struggling to get past 2 straight miles at Chastain due to heat and hills. Today in what was absolutely ideal running conditions we very easily went 4 consecutive miles without stopping. The temperature was right at about 50 degrees, so we didn’t get hot, and it is perfectly flat in the actual town of Sonoma. To be honest we probably could have gotten in a 5th mile without stopping, but we didn’t want to push ourselves too far and not be ready for the rest of the day’s activities.
Unfortunately Jes’ phone died about 2 miles into our run, so we don’t have a full GPS record of the run or a time, but we are thinking we got the 4 miles in at right around 44 or 45 minutes. If you had asked me at the start of year if I would ever have been able to run 4 consecutive miles, I would have laughed in your face. Tomorrow we will go for a bike ride, but maybe Monday morning before we leave we can get another run in, maybe get to the 5 mile mark. And then it will be back to the grueling Chastain Loop, but at least on the bright side we have a much better appreciation for just how difficult that path really is.
