That was FUN!

So I'm in week four of my half-marathon training.  This means a five mile run for my long run, and that's today.  I decided that I was sick of running around Andrews AFB.  I asked a friend of mine, who started training in Jan. if she wanted to run the National Mall with me at my ungodly slow pace.  She has a race next week and needs to just do some slow/short runs so she was nice enough to accept.

I woke up at 0515 and picked her up at 0530.  Off we went to Ft. McNair to park and start the run.  The first two miles FLEW past.  It was great, of course she didn't even breath heavy, but I wasn't doing to horribly either.  We ran past the Potomac and the fish monger (smelly) and up to the reflection pool.  The reflection pool has been completely gutted and the left side of the path is closed down, so we ran past on the right and up to the Lincoln Memorial.  Then took a right in front of that and then another right in front of the Vietnam Memorial and down by the lake in that area.  Up past the WWII Memorial across a few roads, around the Washington Monument and back onto the Mall.  Somewhere around the Washington Memorial is when I really started to die.  By 3.5 miles I was relatively sure my legs were going to cramp, but they didn't.

I made us stop and take this pic:

The sun was still low as it was around 0645 but you can see the Capitol Building, so you know I was really there!

We turned down the street with L'Enfant Metro Station and headed back to Ft. McNair.  I sorta underestimated and we ended up doing closer to 6 miles but I only ran the 5 and I did walk, I think, 3 or 4 times.  My goal was to do the 5 miles in under 15 min miles.  Well, I not only beat that I slaughtered it.  My average minute per mile was 13:09!!  I'm so close to my goal of 12:00.  I couldn't have done it without Falen's help and I'm so appreciative that she'd put up with my slow pace.

So that's it at 0845 I've already done my 5 miles.  What have you done today?