Long run today. As I have not been feeling well, I decided to just run and figure out how far I would go once I had been out for a little while. I figured that I would run a minimum of 15 miles even if I wasn't feeling good, and possibly as many as 20 if I felt great. I ran out to sunset park, and decided to run a loop of the park hard just to make sure that I would still get a little speed work in even if I started feeling bad. The wind was pretty strong again (similar to Wednesday, but maybe a little bit weaker). The wind was significantly stronger than the last time I ran a tempo run here, but for some reason I think that the net effect on me was less as the wind was blowing in a different direction and it slowed me down less in relation to how much it helped me. Anyhow, I ran the 2.7 mile loop in 14:10 (just under 5:15 average), which made me happy as I was just shooting for a 14:24 (5:20 average). I then ran two more loops of the park easy. I started to feel like I was still kind of sick around 10 miles into the run so I decided to run home after the second of the two easy loops around the park. I still wanted to run some more mileage fast before finishing, so I ran three miles hard followed by one last mile easy. The wind was against me for only 1:05 of the last 3 miles, followed by a strong tailwind for the rest of it. I finished the 3 miles in 15:02 with a mile split of 4:55 in the middle of it. Even though I wasn't feeling 100% prior to the tempo, the wind (plus a mild downhill) really helped. I made it home to finish 17.3 miles in 1:51:38. | 