This Morning's Long Run

 This morning I woke to it being 66 degrees in the house (you can't gauge my excitement through a keyboard lol, but I love pajama pants wearing weather ). It was about 52 degrees out at my house, but I decided to still wear shorts and a t-shirt. My Tahoe was cold, and the leather seats were worse lol, by the time we got to the trails my thermostat was saying 45 degrees (the Angel Mounds trails are right next to the river so it's always colder there). I went ahead and replaced the batteries in my headlamp, I think I only need to replace them like once a year so everytime I forget how to open the damn things.
  It was still dark when we started, the first 4 miles were in darkness so I had my headlamp on. I was aiming for anywhere between 6-8 miles this morning, gauging how my legs were feeling and if the dogs would hold up well. This would be Jetta's longest run yet. She has a really easy, steady stride that she starts with and just keeps it all the way through (maybe it's a GSD thing?) while Rocky will start out really fast and then slow down in the middle and then get slower towards the end, which is why it's nice to hit the trails so I don't have to have them on a leash.  
  Overall the run went really good, the first mile was the slowest (which is usual for my trail runs, I don't really push myself towards my road pace when on trails). Actually, looking at my garmin it shows my 4th mile was 4 seconds slower than the first mile, understandable.
  By about mile 5.3 we got back around the loop towards the parking lot and headed to drop my headlamp off at the Tahoe since it was light enough out that I didn't need it. So far my legs were feeling okay, tired and almost like I had already been out there for 6-7 miles but no pain. We headed back out for one more loop with hopes of reaching 8 miles.
  I am happy to say that we finished 8.3 miles on the trails this morning, in 1:28:39 with an average pace of 10:41 min/mile. 
  Laps/splits were:
Mile 1 - 11:08
Mile 2 - 10:20
Mile 3 - 10:19
Mile 4 - 11:12
Mile 5 - 10:27
Mile 6 - 10:38
Mile 7 - 11:03
Mile 8 - 10:39
.3       - 9:34

    I am feeling hopeful but I am not wanting to feel completely out of the woods yet, next week I am still going to take it easy and probably run my long run around 12 miles while leaving my mid-week long run around 8-9 miles just to be safe. I am also going to schedule a massage on Wednesday, hopefully a deep tissue massage will help me tremendously. Then if all goes well I can resume my training while staying cautious and sticking with foam rolling and stretching and icing.