10 miles @ Town Lake, 1:43

Yesterday I ran my first ever 10-miler, the longest distance I've run in my life. It wasn't actually as hard as I thought it would be, although the first 4-5 miles before the sun started setting were pretty hot and sucky. I ran the entirety of the Town Lake Hike and Bike trail. I kept expecting to get to a point where I'd think, "OK, I just can't do this anymore" but I never really did. The hardest part was the first half; by the second I'd made it under the I-35 bridge onto the part of the trail I'd run before, so I knew I could make it back and if I really crashed I could cross one of the bridges before MoPac and get back to my car. At about 2 miles in the trail stops running along the lake and is basically just the sidewalk on Riverside going over 35 and down until it meets Lakeshore, which is a pretty grim stretch lacking in shade and water fountains. That was the part where I kept thinking, OK, I'm like 7 miles from my car, I have no money, and I'm going to be stuck in East Austin forever if I can't keep going. I took like a 90-second walk break here (after 35 minutes or so) to regroup and reassure myself that I was on the right track, and after that I was running 10 minute miles the rest of the way. I lured myself to MoPac fantasizing about the water coolers RunTex puts out every day, because while water fountains on the trail are plentiful, they aren't necessarily cold.

I'm pretty impressed with having trained myself to run sans Ipod- I tried doing it again on Monday and the new headphones I got were a pain in the ass and kept slipping out of my ears so I ended up just taking them off and carrying the damn thing. Even yesterday, I just kind of got in the zone and did it, and I knew I could do it right from the start. Why has it gotten so much easier just being here? I think maybe I was just getting really bored running in Houston, doing the same boiling hot loop around Memorial Park every day, sucking exhaust fumes. I think Austin heat is much less stifling that Houston heat. At least we're in August, the nadir of the summer. Things can only get better from here, and maybe one day it'll be cool again. This is the point in the summer where I start to disbelieve that winter will ever come again.