Today is a good day

I ran my long run this morning. I got up super early (it starts getting light around five here) and headed out to the group run course. I started the course around six, and it was gorgeous out then. A balmy sixty five degrees, with a nice breeze coming off of the river. Of course, as it got later in the morning the sun got quite a bit warmer, but I was done before eight, so it never got too uncomfortable for me.
I was still undecided when I started out as to whether I was going to do the recommended six, or try for the ten I knew I wanted to do. I ended up feeling really good, so I went the full ten. I knew if I didn't I'd regret it later today. I ran a little slower than I intended to run (9:45/mile instead of 9:00/mile) but I figured that it was okay since this was really the first long run of the season.
I love, love, love my new fuel belt. It really wasn't warm enough to need it, but I figured that I should start trying to get used to it. It took me about a mile to become accustomed to the sensation of something slightly heavy around my waist (who'd have thought that 24oz of fluid would feel so heavy?), but then I practically forgot about it. My only complaint is that it's kind of hard to manuver the bottles back into their holsters while moving, but I'm sure I'll get better at it.
There were a lot of people out on the course today. I counted about 28, which is pretty good for the end of June. The numbers out there seem to really pick up come mid September. The Saturday morning group is the largest organized group run in the area and sometimes there are as many as 100 runners on the course.
I feel very satisfied with my performance today though. I also made a decision while running today that I WILL run the Hannibal Cannibal 10k next weekend. I like to race, and my reasons for not running that race were really kind of lame when I laid them all out neatly yesterday. So, the registration is in the mailbox as of this morning. I also registered for the Missouri River 8k in three weeks. Although I've never run this race itself, I've run the route that they have planned on taking and I love it (very flat river bottom road) and it will be a nice race for a short run.