Are we there yet?

You would think that the humidity would have dropped by now but such was not the case today. One of the drawbacks of running so early in the morning is fighting the humidity but I'd rather deal with that than the sun. So, our plan was to run 10 miles, some on Riverside and the rest around Jenks. After the first hour, I was dripping wet, I wasn't expecting this and didn't put any Glide on and I was anticipating some wincing in the shower when raw skin was kissed by water. The good news was that we had already done 6 miles and had escaped the burning heat. As we headed through Jenks, I began to tire and tried to focus on my mental training. I looked at my surroundings for distractions and this proved to be helpful. We stopped to drink some water and I was encouraged to discover that we had only 3 more miles to go. At this point my legs were beginning to feel heavy and tight and I realized that pushing so hard on my short runs this week was taking a toll on my long run, yet, I need to get stronger. So, on I plodded, focusing on a technique I've been practicing of raising my knees higher and making sure that my foot plant does not start with a heel strike. I had been commenting to my neighbor, who coaches students for track, that my abductors and adductors were stiff and weak and he told me that was because I shuffled too much, that I needed to pick up my feet more. So, particularly in my short runs, I have been working on picking up my feet more.
When we got to the Jenks bridge, I shouted, "how much further," thinking that we were probably at 9 miles and I was right (my Garmin is not working). That last mile seemed to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r, when we went under Riverside, by Starbucks, I thought, puh-leez, only a little bit more and after a short loop around the parking lot, we were done. The best part about this run was that we were done by 7:30, can you believe that? It's been ages since I got home before 9:00 after a Saturday run. But, now that the temperatures should be dropping, we will probably be starting later and our runs will be getting longer since we're getting closer to our marathons.