Thursday mornings/seven miles

The past two Thursdays I've gone for a seven mile run in the morning. Heather and I are training for the Baltimore half-marathon. It's next Saturday, October 11th. It's going to be hard. Really hard. All the training I've done has (almost) prepared me for it, but I'm still dreading the last 2-3 miles. You always hear that the race day adrenaline will take you the last bit. The training programs never have you running the full race distance until race day, expecting just that. The long Sunday runs we've been going on (10-11 miles this past month) have been really challenging, to the point where I forget that I like running. I finish and feel like dying, puking, and never running again. So, wtf, right? Why am I doing this? My best guess right now is that I'm doing this for the Thursday morning runs. In the past two weeks I've realized that - hey - I have become a much stronger runner, despite the post-11 mile run feeling. I feel great right now, I felt great over the course of the past just-over-an-hour it took me to run 7 miles. It's fall, it's finally chilly outside, the air is clear and I loved running in it. Please remind me to read this blog post once I'm done throwing up after finishing the half-marathon.