Cheshire Challenge

Today I had an 8 mile run on my training calendar. I haven't run a long run alone in about a month. The last few long runs I've done have been races. So I was kind of dreading the long run and then to top it off, I woke up this morning and it was down pouring heavily. I don't mind running in the (light) rain in the summer, but running in rain when it's cooler weather is not fun.
But, despite the rain, I got out of bed when my alarm went off and got ready to head out of my running, hoping & praying the rain would stop.
Just as I pulled into the parking lot of the bike path, the rain stopped!
But, the rain must have kept everyone home that morning, because I didn't see anyone for the first 4 miles! highly unusual, since it's usually a busy bike path. But I did see a deer cross the path right in front of me around mile 2.

I hit mile 4, the turn around point and I felt pretty good. My time was great - I was set to PR.... and then things started to fall apart. I started to lose steam and get slower & slower. I kept pushing through, still hoping to pull it together for a PR.
When I finished - at 1:32:09, I thought I hit a PR... I was so sure my last 8 mile time was 1:33:50. But when I got home and checked my data on the garmin website I realized that my last 8 mile time was 1:31:50... so I missed my PR by 20 seconds. I was bummed, but at least I did it!!

And I earned a cool, new, HUGE medal! I decided that because this medal was so big, it deserved more than a 10k (6.2 miles)... it deserved 8 miles!