Fear not!   I was not attacked by a bear or a giant lobster.  However, I saw both (kind of… check out the pictures.  The bears (and moose) are made of solid chocolate, but keep in mind: a chocolate bear is still a bear…).  Anyway, I went for a 17 mile run while in Maine.  The weather was, well, perfect.  58 degrees, 2% humidity (based on my internal humiditometer), and not a cloud in the hemisphere.  It was supposed to be 18 miles with 14 at Marathon Pace (~8 min/mile).  Based on the route I chose, 17 is what it came out to be.  An exact 8.5 miles out and 8.5 miles back.

Maine-ly (see what I did there?) because of the amazing weather, wide bike lane, and awesome scenery, everything about this run felt good.  As the sun was rising during the first mile I started to pick up the pace to get to the 8:00 min/mile mark.  My plan was to run miles 2 through 15 at that speed and use the other miles as warm-up and cool-down.  Well, when everything falls into place like it did, I actually found it difficult to go slow enough.  After a bit, I stopped fighting it.  Other than the first mile (8:15 min/mile), every mile was under 8 minutes.  Actually, there were several late in the run in the 7:30s that felt amazing.  It seemed like I always had another gear to get up the next hill, so instead of slowing down, I pushed a little harder and not because I thought I was being chased by a giant lobster.

The halfway point was the end of Cape Elizabeth in Two Lights State Park.  The picture above was taken later in the trip when Ev was looking for rocks.  (Side story: Ev and I went to Cape Elizabeth so I could show her the lighthouse and great view I saw on my run.  There were lots of people there, most of whom were staring at the ground and picking up rocks.  It turns out they were looking for sea glass*.  Well, without a moment’s hesitation, Ev started looking for sea glass.  She was quite good at it too.  If it were a game, I think she would have won.  You can see her dominating the children competition in the picture.  End side story)

Without going into too much more detail, the entire run was amazing.  Perhaps the Maine Marathon will find its way onto the schedule, but that’s for another post.  Definitely in the top 5 best runs ever.

The Details:

Portland’s 17 Mile Long Run:

Route

*Sea glass, for those who don’t know, is just glass that gets eroded in the ocean and washed on shore.  Typically from beer bottles and the like, it finds its way onto the sand in a very smooth condition.  That is your sea glass lesson for this blog post.  Questions can be directed to http://tinyurl.com/q6edza