tonight, i was incredibly awesome!  and not a moment too soon because i was very much in need of a pick-me-up both actively and personally.  last night… seriously a low point in my life.  no, not going into it.  tonight, though, i rocked.  i decided to switch things up and do my long run tonight on the bridge so that i’ll only have three miles to do when i get down to orlando saturday night.  my decision was also helped by the fact that there was some construction that prevented us from doing our normal bridge route so we ended up starting from our running store, which is 1.66 miles from the start of the bridge so, really, i had to do five if i wanted to actually go over the bridge.  i don’t take well to changes to my running routine.  i am comfortable with my bridge and my park runs and i don’t like going outside those comfort zones much during training.  many find tonight’s route preferable because you only have to do the bridge once for the five miles, which is twice over on our regular route.  me, i prefer the twice over actually.  i actually like going over the bridge… i can sprint up it and then i get the sweet reprieve of gravity.  it’s a beautiful thing and i actually prefer it to just flat running.  it pushes me to change up my pace so that i don’t just settle into a lazy stride.  this is why i did all my long runs there last year.  and an added bonus is that the more comfortable i am on the bridge, the better prepared i am for hills on race day.  so, tonight was a lot of flat and it was also lonelier because i only passed people once whereas i usually see people more because they’ll be doing multiple laps.  there was also a long, very dark stretch that i didn’t like.  fortunately, i had my hubby who stayed with me and another chick who is roughly my pace.  we had our own little running pack so that was nice.  so, why am i so awesome?  i managed to push out 5.06 miles in one hour flat!  i didn’t track my runs thoroughly last year but i’m pretty sure my fastest five was more in the 1:10:00+ range.   tonight’s average pace was 11:54!!!  i never thought i’d be able to maintain sub-12 for that distance.  i’m so proud of me!