Whew! Sixteen miles. So that’s done. This was the training run that really made everything click—that this marathon is happening and running it is really hard. Twelve miles was hard. Fourteen miles was hard. But this week, 16 miles was painful. Especially once we hit the last three miles, when I felt like I was crawling through an ocean of molasses just trying to get back to the parking lot. Weirdly, this has made me even more excited for our 18 mile run coming up in two weeks.

The best thing we did was switch up the scenery and run at the beach. We started just south of the Santa Monica Pier and ran four miles north, just a little past Temescal Canyon Road. It was a beautiful day at the beach. We are so lucky to live here!