45 minutes into Saturday's long run, I had stumbled across 5 deer but only 2 other people.  That's my kind of run.  They bolted when they heard me crunching up the frozen trail, then stopped and stared as I passed.  It was as if they couldn't believe that they were afraid of something that plodded along so slowly.

Last week saw the mileage bump back up again after having stepped down the week before.  Monday and Wednesday were cross-training.  Tuesday consisted of 12 quarter-mile intervals, Thursday was a 6-mile run with 3 miles at short-tempo pace, and Saturday was around 18 miles at marathon pace + 30sec/mile.  The grand total reached about 31 miles.

It dawned on me this week that we're two months away from race day in Knoxville.  After this point, my program sets up alternating 20 and 15-mile long runs before tapering off for the last two weeks.  Looking back at my mileage log from last year, the farthest I had run in training to this point had been 15 miles.  I'm definitely feeling a lot stronger than I did then.  At the same time, I'm also expecting to run at least 30sec/mile faster than I did last year, so I'd better be feeling stronger or I'm really going to be in trouble.

Favorite moment of the run:  There was a point in those first 45 minutes on Saturday when I realized that there probably wasn't another person within at least a half mile of where I was running.  Following a week where people were constantly lined up at my door to tell me what was going wrong or how I needed to help them, it was truly liberating to think that I had the whole path to myself, a task of my own choosing ahead of me, and a couple more hours of quiet time to complete it.

Song-of-the-run:  Shortly after I realized that there wasn't anyone else around, "No One Like You" by David Crowder Band filled the headphones.  Feeling relatively spiritual in the first place as I broke through the trees into a sunlit clearing and onto a bridge over a glassy lake, this song kicked it into high gear.  I guess the endorphins must have been kicking in, too.  Safe in the knowledge that there were probably more deer watching than people, I threw my arms out to the side and "flew" across the open water.