Nothing like going for my "long" run on a nice blazing hot sunny day... at noon! It wasn't that bad, really, in fact this was a great run around the "big lake" ... it is 8.8 miles around but wife and I did an extra 1 mile prior to starting -- she in bare feet, me just getting used to wearing the Asics again... I found I was able to implement my barefooting technique pretty well, and the shoes felt nice and cushiony soft. I tied my shoelaces differently this time ... tight around the arch and near the ankle, but looser near the toe box. I definitely felt a difference with my toes being able to "spread apart" more on contact. I think it helped me stay mentally in touch with forefoot striking/barefoot technique, so that was a plus. Even with the pre-run mile, when we hit the lake trail we ran well beyond the point where we stopped to drink water on the last run. (I intended to run as long as possible without stopping, but I just can't seem to do it in the heat). I think we took our first little water break/breather at about the 6 mile mark, and our pace was consistently around 9:30 or 9:45 ... we were even hitting in the 8's a couple of times on gradual downslopes and we were both feeling pretty strong. I felt we were doing really really well, especially for running on a mixture of dirt/gravel/single-track trail, etc. through the weeds. About 4 miles in though, we were both torched by a trail-running dude wearing a camelback, and flying along at like 7:00 pace. Dang! I want to be that fast one of these days! Anyway I think we paused twice more between miles 7 and 9, once when my shoe came untied, and once because I just needed to regroup in the heat before tackling the final 2 miles. We stopped too long (ate some orange slices) that last time, and both our legs felt like lead and it was hard to get going again. Still, I had a kick left at the end (not much of one) and got my pace back down to about 9:30 for the last quarter mile. After having such a low-mileage week last week, I was happy to have a successful jaunt of near 10 miles. We both remarked that we actually felt better after this 10 mile run than we did a couple of weeks ago after the 8-mile run. My running technique felt very different now, and our speed was better overall as well (I think the entire run was 10:15 average pace, but that was skewed a bit by the first barefoot/warmup mile which was quite slow, about 12:00).
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