15 long miles later

While we were at the mall on Saturday, Chris suggested we have biscuits and gravy for dinner. We agreed it would be a delicious way to carb load for my planned 15 miler on Sunday morning. When Chris got out the bisquick box I saw the picture of pancakes and made a comment that those looked really good. Before I knew it, Chris said it was ready and I walked out to the kitchen to find this delicious spread.

Pancakes, biscuits & gravy, bacon and all the fixins

Chris also made some scrambled egg whites and he shared a little of those with me. I made a complete piggy out of myself and ate all 4 of those pancakes, 2 biscuits with gravy, 4 pieces of bacon, along with the scrambled eggs. I finished it all off with my butterfinger pumpkin, but sadly it was too much chocolate for me to handle (how is that possible?). 

1st plate of delicious carbs

I only ate half of his face off

Then we spent the rest of the night relaxing and watching Prometheus, which I am still undecided about whether I liked it or not. I got all my stuff ready for the next morning and set my alarm for 5am. Sunday morning my eyes popped open and the alarm clock said 4:58, dang 2 minutes before the alarm. Then I remembered the time change and I checked my phone hoping I had another hour of sleep ahead of me, but alas the alarm clock had changed automatically and it really was time to get up. I went out on the balcony to test the temperature and saw some scary looking fog hanging around but I decided not to let it affect my run. 
*Note, this is not my photo, but a good representation of what it looked like. This photo can be found here: source

Foggy morning on the beach

I was out the door and running by 5:30 at an easy warm up pace, but I thought it might be a little faster than a 10 minute mile. That first mile set the tone for the rest of the run, and I think my body knew I needed to take it easy so that I would be able to run further than I ever had before. (My previous longest distance was 13.5 miles) Unfortunately, around mile 2 I had to run through some sand piles and managed to kick a large amount of sand into my shoes, so I had to stop and empty them out. It was a long, slow run, but somehow I managed to make it through and ran the entire 15 miles in 2 hours 37 minutes. That was exactly a 10:30 pace and I was pretty proud of that considering it included the stop to clean out my shoes, the short walk breaks I took at miles 5, 8, and 11 to refuel, and stopping for a water refill at mile 9. I'm really proud of this run and I feel like I fought for every single mile I finished. 

I'm thinking I might need to find something else to use on these long runs to hold my fuel and water. My fuel belt was really bothering me today, it kept riding up and I was fighting with it the entire run. Also, I'm starting to need more water than I can carry on this particular belt. Anyone have any recommendations? I really hate having extra stuff on me during my run, so I don't want anything too big or annoying. I have a Camelback that I use for long bike rides, but I just don't know if I could handle all the sloshing and bouncing that it would do if I tried to run with it. 

Please share what you use to carry your essentials for those long runs??