Surprise on 18 miler

Today I had 18 miles on the schedule - done!  My running buddy and I went out to the Paint Creek Trail(see post couple days ago) and ran from Rochester to Lake Orion and back.  18 miles on the trail was perfect plus it's crushed limestone so it's really nice on the legs.  Legs feel really good right now.

I figured why not go out and run something that was flat.  I mean, we have been putting in some good miles at Stoney Creek and it's not exactly flat.  It would be a nice change of pace.  The funny thing is when I got home and plugged in the Garmin, the elevation was far from flat but it sure felt flat running it.  Take a look at the elevation for the run:

Surprise!!!!  Not a flat run at all.  I suppose because it was spread over about 9 miles, it did not seem like there was an elevation but it was deceiving us!

We actually finished the run at a pretty decent pace as seen below:

Just about my marathon goal pace.

Here's a couple of "bird's eye view" pictures of the run we did as well.

Start at the park!

A nice little pond we ran past twice!

Nice run past the Wyndgate Golf Course(private!)

The turnaround in Lake Orion

And there you have it.  How I spend my Saturday morning.  We started at 7:30am so there was really nobody out there on the way out except maybe a person or two but on the way back we saw many people.  We saw a guy training for the Boston Marathon too.  I'm glad we did an out and back run today since the marathon in May is an out and back so it gives you a flavor for it.  One thing on this run is that there is not many turns so you can see for miles in front of you and mile in back of you.  That makes the run a little harder since you see how far you still need to run but it was still nice to have different route to run.

Question of the day:  What is the surface you like to run on most?  Cement, Asphalt, crushed limestone, trail, heavy trail? I like the crushed limeston - still harder but better on the legs.

Have a great day and......Keep Running!!!!!