There is blood in my shirt

And it's mine.

Today was a good day. I overslept as usual on Sundays(and other days) and it took me a couple of coffees and a couple of hours to wake up. Sadly, living in Perfidious Albion results in having very short,and at least chilly, days which left me with no options to have my long run other than the treadmill. 10 miles, a very long distance that I had only run once and of course that was outdoors. In the treadmill it was going to be an experimental realization of unbounded boredom. While I changed into running clothes I also started looking for excuses to make it a shorter distance on my way to the gym. The best one was just because I have been off exercise for half a week due to a mild cold. And well, 6 miles is still far better than nothing :).

With the perfect excuse under my belt, I set out for 10 miles though. Today I did something unusual and started with a proper warm-up during the first mile. So far so good so I speed up to my chosen pace(7mph which is slower than what I usually aim for in the treadmill).

3 miles...

4 miles...

5 miles...

And I keep feeling very well.

6 miles...

7.5 miles... And after a quick stop to restart the machine(cos' that is the maximum distance you can set) I keep going, pushing myself a bit, just a bit, and speeding up to 7.3mph. That may seem a minor speed up but sustaining it for a mile can be quite challenging.

9 miles...

I am feeling very good. One mile to go but I know I have something left on my legs. I also know that 'it's only 5km extra'. So I decide to go for it.

And a bit later: 13.2 miles!, or in more familiar units 21.2km and 1h 53 minutes on the clock. I have run my first half-marathon. On a treadmill, though. But it feels good. Ok, I'm totally knackered, but it feels good, very good. Although the blood in my shirt is from my nipples, running long times does that if you're not careful. It's a bit itchy but I'm proud of having run long enough to make my nipples bleed.

Why?I had been extrapolating my possible half-marathon finishing times from my shorter run times and I had come up with something near 1h 50min. I did it in slightly longer than that and I could have run slightly faster, so not bad, but I need to work hard if I realistically want to go below 1:45. But today's run was very good because I just needed to have a measurement, some tangible proof that those 'extra 5km' were just that, a bit more that I could cope with, other than a killing factor. Now I have it, now I have to stop doing what I did today and try not to get myself injured because this is not the end, this is just the beginning and it is going to be great!