After an 8-year hiatus, please welcome back...

...the runner's high!!!

I haven't had one since senior-year track, but Friday I was determined to run the longest I'd run since then. And I did, an 8-miler. That speaks to my laziness in college, but nothing to be done about that now. So I pulled on my spy suit (Under Armour longsleeve and Asics tights) and wraparound earmuffs and drove to the park.

It was so, so cold.

The high was 33 today, and at 3:30 when I got to the park I'd put it at closer to 26. I stretched more than usual, started the watch and decided that I at least wanted to do the 8 without stopping, even though I was simply freezing. If I managed to warm up, my goal would be to break 1 hour -- a 7:30-per-mile pace.

I warmed up. And I'm, as ever, an unpaceable misfit.

First mile: 6:44. My defense for this one is that I was simply moving as quickly as possible to warm my body, and I could not bear to hang back for a 7:30 just for the sake of negative (or even consistent) splits.

Second mile: 6:45. Now we see obstinance rear its ugly head. There was no reason for me to push this pace on a flat mile in the middle of plenty of trees (no wind, less cold). But I felt vaguely like I was dragging after I closed the first mile, and I suppose I just wanted to jolt myself further into running mode. At any rate, after the second mile, I started to think, "Well, I know I can't break 7 for all of them, but let's just see how many I can do before I have to drop back into a saner pace." Pretty stupid, if you're planning a strategy for a long run, but like I said, I haven't done an 8 in a while, and I was just having some fun. So...

Third mile: 6:53. The third mile (and seventh) is the reverse course of the second (and sixth), while the fourth (and eighth) is the reverse of the first (and fifth). Two miles out, two miles in, two miles back out, two miles back in. Simple. The first (fourth, fifth, eighth) mile is much hillier than the second, and thus is harder to slog through when you're tired. But by this point, I resolved to break seven for the fourth mile and then everything else would be gravy.

Fourth mile: 6:56. 27:18 for half the run. (I ran 27:15 doing negative splits on Monday, and that was the entire run, so I felt pretty good about today's 4.)

Fifth mile: 7:23. Ahhh that felt good.

Sixth mile: 6:41.

Okay. There's no good explanation for that one, EXCEPT, I was FINALLY warm. Finally. It took five and a half miles, but my legs finally defrosted. Can I use the word finally again? And this is when the runner's high started to kick in and take over my brain. "If I break 7:20 I'll be under 7:00 pace for the first six miles; obviously I have no shot to keep the last two under 7:00, so let's lay out while we've got the goods." I swear, that's what I was mumbling to myself, word for word. Confusing colloquialisms, shoddy math; this is my brain on drugs.

So yes, six miles in, I was under 7:00 pace -- 41:26, about a 6:54 average. And with a 34-second cushion, I decided to get greedy. What the hell, I just ran a 6:41; if I could turn that around again, I could coast in with a sub-8 and still keep my average in the sixes. They're numbers, arbitrary goals, but I'm my own coach and these are the carrots I dangle for myself; I'm still math-oriented, even though I haven't taken math since, well, since my last runner's high.

Seventh mile: 6:40. Ka-pow. If I can just get to the last U-curve below the last uphill at around 6:30, I can do it.

Last U-curve below last uphill: 5:30.

Eighth mile: 6:57.

Second 4 miles: 27:41.

That split pattern again (as track coaches everywhere cringe):
6:44, 6:45, 6:53, 6:56, 7:23, 6:41, 6:40, 6:57.

Average mile: 6:52:36. Elapsed time: 54:59. I had five minutes left in my hour, so I used one for vomiting, then four for staggering. And then I drove home. (Where I stretched for years and years, hakuna matata.)

Highlights: Last remnants of Thanksgiving-break-football lactic acid expunged from muscles; first runner's high since high school; first running-related vomiting since junior high; sweaty earmuffs, one pair of.

WELCOME to the end of the post! Most likely, you skimmed through the numbers until the last ones, and with good reason. But anyway, the run was great, and it's nice to reach a goal I've set for myself. The best feeling was realizing that I finally have the guts to run in sub-freezing temperatures, and I don't expect it to get much colder than 26 here, so this spring will be the first in a while in which I won't have to start from scratch after a winter of exercise that consists entirely of shivering under blankets.