after 3 hours, 3 cat hills, and 3 harlem hills, my last 18-miler of the season is complete.

with 6 weeks to the marathon, i am making a vow not to run up cat hill or the harlem hills until after the marathon and until after i've forgotten how much those hills make me want to punch myself in the face.

during sundays 18-miler in central park, which was actually a nyrr race (18 mile tune-up), i kept asking myself what kind of sadistic person thought it'd be a good idea to have people run counter-clockwise around central park three times.  at one point, i was cursing the sadistic person who designed central park and those damned hills (i was about halfway up the harlem hills, second time around when i thought this).

but then it dawned on me- three times around central park counter-clockwise, with three times up cat hill, and three times up the harlem hills... is a hell of a lot more difficult than the marathon itself.  perhaps nyrr was doing all of us a favor because in theory, the marathon should be easier than this devil of a training course.

all in all, i'm pretty happy with how i ran.  it was hot and sticky and i probably should've opted for shorts instead of my capri running pants... but when you wake up and leave your apartment before the sun rises, you don't realize that it won't be that chilly for long.

i started with meg, cindy, and lisa but lost all of them pretty early on.  i was definitely glad that i had thought to bring my ipod along with me or i would've been in pretty bad shape. my pace was pretty consistent throughout the run, ranging from a 10:20 to a 10:58 throughout all 18 miles, besides the last mile when i went all out. in the beginning, i felt good and wanted to run faster but i knew that running faster would probably be a bad idea with the difficult course and the number of miles i had ahead of me.  i kept looking down at my watch and telling myself to "go slower, you have 18 miles to run."

i did every mile in under 11 minutes.. which is a really big deal, especially since the course is essentially uphill the entire way, with the two hills of death. honestly, even the downhills and flats felt like uphills.  it was just rough altogether.

i finished with an average pace of 10:48 min/mile, overall time of 3:14:07.  if i run this pace the day of the marathon, i will PR by about 7 minutes.

put that in your pipe and smoke it.