It's cool to read that many have discovered that they can run more than they thought this week! I also did that last week with six running days in a row. On the last day I thought I would just stop and sit on the sidewalk right then, so I think I will stick to five days a week for now!

Although I'm sure that it would be different (read: worse), I think I have a vague feeling of what the 20-mile wall in a marathon feels like.

I went for a long and slow run yesterday, 22 km with as low a heart rate as I can manage running (including on hills, which was a challenge). I wanted to give myself a little bit of a break because I had a tough intervals session on Saturday. I think I had run 22 km before, but never so slowly. It's great to run slowly, but it takes a long time, thus my joints got more tired I guess. I also had to be careful as a lot of the surfaces were quite frosty and some downright iced up.

The last 3 km were really unpleasant. Plus, I had needed to empty my bladder since km 12, had waited to get out of the woods (lots of people) and off to the beach (possibility of unlocked change rooms), only to find that all the beach restrooms were locked up. Really annoying, but another motivation to get home, so I picked up the pace on the last hill!

The cool thing is that on the 22 km loop I saw a couple of people, one local road racer on his mountain bike and another runner, whom I had also seen yesterday, two times at two opposite points on the loop. It makes for a more cheerful "good morning!"

This was my 18k+ run before my February 17 half-marathon. I'll take a week of active rest now.