weekend running

my,my, what beautiful weather we've been having lately. certainly un-januarylike, and i certainly appreciate it. as a sign of appreciation to mother nature, darrin and i took off on an 8.2 mile run saturday morning. a fairly flat course the goes out crews road, crosses into illinios, does a loop that links back to state line road, then back to crews road, and home. there's a nice downhill at mile 3, and then an uphill, downhill, and uphill again at miles 6-7. the last uphill is the most difficult. it was sunny and 35 degrees as we started out, which is wonderful for january. the first couple of miles were ok. we had driven out and dropped water bottles at mile 4, so we took a minute walk break there. i felt stronger and stronger after that. i cruised up the hills at miles 6 and 7 and came home strong in a total time of 1:19:09, or 9:43/mile. i'm very happy with this, as not only do i consider it a good time for me right now, but i felt like i could have run another 8.2 if i really had to. plus, i beat darrin by 20 seconds. he had to take a walk break in the last mile because he wasn't feeling well. i remember last year when i wasn't training consistently at all, darrin was beating me by a minute or two on 3-mile runs. i think i've reeled him in now. cool! i did feel tired most of the day, but i didn't have any leg soreness at all.
on sunday nite, i called darrin about 9:00 to see if he wanted to get in an easy 3. he declined, because apparently his bodyglide failed him during saturday's run in regions of his body i'd rather never think about. so i ran alone in the amazing 52 degree weather. i felt really good again and tacked on an extra 3 laps, and ended up running 12 laps in the neighborhood for a total of 4.3 miles in 40:10/9:20.
i decided to let myself eat normally over the weekend. now i didn't go crazy, but i didn't track what i ate, and i know i went over the 1,000 - 1,500 calories that i've been restricting myself to lately. it felt good to eat. i'd been craving normal meals for a while and it was good to let go. and, i didn't gain any weight either. i guess the 12.5 miles of weekend running helped with that.
all in all, i had a good weekend running-wise. i feel very good about my progress so far and i can't wait until next weekend so i can tack on a few extra miles and really push myself. i hope everyone else had a great weekend as well.