Day 47 (10/9): 5 miles / 45:53

Wow - that was hard.  After running only 3 miles for each training day for the last two weeks, this run felt like an eternity.  Mile 1 felt just about the same as it always does - it takes almost the entire mile to loosen up my muscles and joints and get geared up for the remainder of my run.  Mile 2 felt pretty good, but I was worried I was maybe going a little too fast considering the fact that I was going to be running so much further than I had in the past few weeks.  Miles 3 and 4 actually felt really good (mile 3 slightly better than mile 4, of course).  The longer distance finally gave me an opportunity to venture out of my neighborhood for a one-mile out-and-back route.  This also made it easy to time myself for those miles - 9:00 out and 8:57 back - not too shabby.  Unfortunately, I probably should have slowed my pace just a bit.  That last mile was a real killer.  All in all, however, I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with my time.  I'm certainly not shattering any records, but I love that I ran five miles at just over a 9:10 pace.  That being said, there's a lot of work to be done if I'm hoping to run the marathon anywhere near a 10:00 mile pace.  I'm realizing this goal might be a bit lofty for me, but with so much time left to train, I don't feel it's right to start lowering my expectations just yet :)