This feels great. Minus the early wake-up calls.

This morning, as my alarm was waking me up in order to go to my 7am group run, I thought "Why do I do this to myself? It's Saturday. In MARCH! I don't need to run at 7am."

But I went, and watched the sun rise in my rearview mirror as I drove there. Once again, I was late (sorry group, I'm just not a morning person, especially on the weekends). And we had a lovely St. Paddy's Day run. This is a great group!

Look at all these bare legs and short sleeves at 7am in March!
Thanks for the pic, Amanda! Who by the way is in pink.

I ended up doing 10 miles, many of them hilly, which I not-so-secretly love. The overabundance of flat trails in the Midwest gets boring after awhile. I love the pithy little hills we have. (The biggest elevation change today was about 100ft over 1.3 miles - that as a big hill worthy of complaints in these parts.)

You know what's crazy? The run didn't feel hard. Sure, it was no walk in the park, but I didn't feel like I was dying, I wasn't counting down the miles, my joints weren't getting achy. Our pace was a little bit slower, I assume because of the hills, and we did stop a few more times than usual, but still ... I didn't feel as exhausted as I normally do. I guess that's good, right? You're not supposed to exhaust yourself on long runs during training. You should feel like you can keep going when you're done.