8 Miles with My Brother

Does 8 Miles with my Brother sound like the name of a potentially new Nicholas Sparks book to you, or is it just me?  As I mentioned before on my blog, my brother runs.  However, to the surprise of many, Saturday was the first time we ever ran together.  I was back in Iowa, where he lives, and wanted to run 8 miles.  He wanted to do a slow run, so I met up with him for a bit before he continued on to complete many more miles without me. 

One thing I love about training runs is that they are relaxing.  We ended  up doing 8 miles in 1:03, just under an 8-minute/mile pace.  It was windy and we ran some hills, and it felt good not to push myself too hard, but just to enjoy the day.  It helped that the temperature was nearly perfect. 

Some things we talked about while running....

• Some of his past races, including the Leadville 100 mile run and his first half marathon
• His future races, including a 100k this weekend, a 24-hour run that he hopes to run over 100 miles in and win coming up, and his next big race: the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Run
• My upcoming races, particularly the Peanut Butter Duathlon and the Rockford Half Marathon
• The fact that I'll probably get smoked in the bike portion of the duathlon because many people who sign up for duathlons are much stronger bikers than runners (this happened to him when he did a duathlon)
• His slowest half time vs. my fastest half time (his slowest = 1:33, my fastest = 1:40)
• Ironman, and ironman training
• NCAA March Madness - we're both hoping Butler wins
• Mileage for the month of March.  Mine: 138.  His: 280. 
• Weekend training runs
• Sleep need for quality training, especially longer weekend training runs
• How a runner we saw while running is incredibly cocky and annoys us both, but in different ways
• My sister and parents
• Relationships
• How running long distances is mostly about mental toughness
• Barefoot running and the fact that we are both against it
• People we both know who live near me and run
• The Chicago Marathon

As you can see, it was a lot of running talk with some other stuff thrown in.  Actually, we talked about relationships and our sister and parents for quite some time. 

Time to watch the final basketball game.  Go Butler!!!!