First Run of the Year

I got up early this morning and was on the road at about 6:45 AM to do a nice half marathon distance run. First 5 miles were flat and I kept an nice pace of about 8:45 then some hills came. I had kept every mile under 9:00 so far so I decided to see if I could keep this up through the hills. I wanted to keep the run easy as I will be running the Icebreaker Marathon in 2 weeks. The hills seemed easy and I finished up at an average pace of 8:30. Total time at 1:51 and some change.

2 hours later I was off to my first ever sports massage. I was a bit nervous going into it as I was told it can hurt a lot at times but it should help out the running. It started out with resistant stretching which felt good. I haven't done a lot of that since my college days. The person doing the massage was named Rachel and she is a little thing but is very strong. She was twisting me up and taking all the force I was pushing back. Then she started on working on my leg muscles. So much for the good feelings. She was using those muscles of hers to destroy my quad muscles like they have never been before. VERY PAINFUL. She did some of the muscles on my back and Glut and I felt like I was going to die at times. Thank God that was over but my legs feel very refreshed now and actually feel lighter. Now I am suppose to drink a lot of water to let all the toxins out.

I suppose that overall it was a good experience and maybe someday I will do it again. We will see how the muscles feel over the next few days. This is suppose to help the marathon in 2 weeks so let's hope for the best.