I can barely believe it myself, but I ran 20 miles this morning in Central Park. The New York Road Runners Club organized a long run for people training for fall marathons. The longest I had run before was about 17 miles for my Chicago Marathon training, but I remember that “run” being mostly walking in the second half.

Today went much better. I started with the 10:30 pace group and stayed with them. We ran 4 loops around Central Park - the 6 mile loop, the 5 mile upper loop, the 5 mile lower loop and then the 4 mile middle loop. The first 3 loops went smoothly, but I started to die around mile 17 or so. I was able to keep my pace around 10:40 for the last 4 miles, but it seemed much slower. Of course, doing anything more strenuous than thinking is painful right now, but it’s a good pain.

The pic to the right is from the Run to Liberty 10K that I ran last week. I ran it as a training run and finished in 1:00:46.