Week #8 - Day 4

Alright, now I'm officially halfway done with my training! 8 weeks down, 8 more to go (the countdown is down to 54 days!). I was pretty unsure about how today would go seeing as I had not run since Wednesday, and that was a shortened run. My knees felt better on Saturday, but when I woke up this morning I felt pretty stiff. I did a lot of stretching at home before I left and was very stiff, even after the stretching. When I got to the park, I stretched even more and finally started to feel slightly less tense. However, pretty soon after I started my run my calves were tightening and my knees were starting to ache. But I pressed onwards and felt looser with each mile.
I hit my turnaround point at 7 miles, and saw that it took just under 1:06 (9:25 mile pace). I was pretty excited about this as it was more than 30 seconds better than last Sunday's pace. However, my pace did slow. I hit the 10 mile point at about 1:36, meaning I was up to about a 10-minute mile. And I think my 13 mile time was 2:06, which is over 3 minutes better than last week. I finally finished up at 2:15:11 (9:39 mile pace). And I actually felt pretty good. I had let my heart rate creep up the last few miles to the mid 80% level.
I'm looking forward to having the day off tomorrow. With the help of some ice (which I'm currently applying for the 2nd time today at the moment) I hope I can be ready for Tuesday's 4 mile run. I really hope I can make it through the week without having to reduce or skip any of my runs. However, I now realize it's not the end of the world if I have to.